German Salary Tax Calculator 2026 – Gross to Net Income (Brutto Netto)

How your gross salary becomes net pay in Germany

A German payslip turns your gross salary (Bruttogehalt) into net pay (Nettogehalt) through two separate systems. Social insurance contributions are worked out under social-security law and shared with your employer, roughly half and half. Wage tax (Lohnsteuer) is worked out separately under tax law, using your Steuerklasse and the allowances built into it, and the solidarity surcharge and church tax are then calculated from that wage tax. The calculator above estimates your standard payroll deductions from the inputs you give it: the wage tax, solidarity surcharge and church-tax basis follow the official 2026 Programmablaufplan that the BMF publishes for payroll systems, while the four social-insurance branches are calculated under their own rules.

The single most surprising thing for most people is how quickly the total deduction rate climbs, and then how it flattens out again at higher salaries. Deductions are not a flat percentage: wage tax is progressive, while social insurance stops growing once your salary passes the contribution ceilings. The table below shows what that looks like for a single employee in tax class I with no children, statutorily insured, no church tax, in 2026.

Notice what happens between 70,000 € and 80,000 €: the wage tax keeps climbing steeply, but the social insurance line barely moves, because health and long-term care contributions stop at the 69,750 € ceiling. That is why the total deduction rate rises by less than one percentage point across that step, while it rose by more than three points between 30,000 € and 50,000 €.

The six Steuerklassen, and which one you belong in

Your Steuerklasse (tax class) does not change how much income tax you owe for the year. It only changes how much your employer withholds each month, which is an advance payment against your real annual liability. Pick a combination that fits your situation badly and you either lend the Finanzamt money interest-free until you file, or face a back payment when you do. Here is what each class means and which allowances are built into the monthly withholding for it.

What each class means

Source: § 38b EStG, tax classes

III/V, IV/IV or IV with a Faktor

For married couples the real decision is III/V versus IV/IV versus IV with a Faktor. The III/V combination shifts monthly cash flow towards the higher earner: the partner in class III gets an unusually generous withholding, while the partner in class V gets an unusually harsh one. It is most often chosen where one income is substantially larger, but there is no threshold at which it is automatically right, so compare your expected household withholding against your expected annual liability rather than relying on a rule of thumb. One practical consequence is fixed, though: choosing III/V makes a tax return mandatory where both spouses had wages, and because the pair can under-withhold across the household, it can produce a back payment.

IV/IV is the neutral option: each spouse is withheld as though they were single, which is close to correct when both earn similar amounts and over-withholds when they do not. IV with a Faktor sits between the two. The Finanzamt calculates a factor of less than 1 from your expected joint income and applies it to both partners' withholding, so each pays roughly their true share of the couple's liability during the year. It is the most accurate option, though it works from estimated income, so a pay rise or other income during the year can still leave a balance due, and choosing it makes a tax return mandatory. One thing worth knowing whichever you pick: your Steuerklasse affects wage-replacement benefits calculated from your net pay, including Arbeitslosengeld, Kurzarbeitergeld and Elterngeld, so a class change well before a planned parental leave or a likely redundancy is worth thinking about. For a side-by-side comparison of the combinations, use the household calculator.

Every deduction on your payslip, explained

Four branches of social insurance are deducted from ordinary employee pay, each with its own rate and its own income ceiling, and each shared with your employer. A fifth branch, statutory accident insurance, is funded by employers alone and never appears on your payslip. Contributions apply only up to the ceiling: euros above it are contribution-free, so above those ceilings your social-insurance contributions fall as a percentage of gross, even though your total deductions including tax keep rising.

Pension insurance (Rentenversicherung)

The contribution is 18.6 percent of your gross salary in 2026, split evenly, so 9.3 percent comes out of your pay and your employer pays the other 9.3 percent. It applies to earnings up to the Beitragsbemessungsgrenze of 101,400 € a year, which is 8,450 € a month. Everything you earn above that line is contribution-free, so the maximum employee contribution under the general statutory scheme is 9,430.20 € for 2026. The separate miners' scheme (knappschaftliche Rentenversicherung) runs to its own higher ceiling of 124,800 € a year. The ceiling has been identical in the former East and West since 2025, so where in Germany you work no longer changes it. Contributions here also build your own future pension, which is why the ceiling matters twice over: euros above it neither cost you a contribution nor earn you any further claim.

Unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung)

At 2.6 percent, this is the smallest of the four, again split evenly, so your own share is 1.3 percent. It uses the same ceiling as the pension branch, 101,400 € a year or 8,450 € a month, which caps an employee's own contribution at 1,318.20 € for the year. It funds Arbeitslosengeld I and, indirectly, Kurzarbeitergeld. The same ceiling limits more than the contribution: the earnings those benefits are calculated from are capped at it too, so a salary well above the line does not produce a proportionally larger benefit.

Health insurance (Krankenversicherung)

Statutory health insurance comes in two parts. The general rate is 14.6 percent and is fixed nationally; on top of it your fund charges its own Zusatzbeitrag, for which the official 2026 reference average is 2.9 percent. Both parts are shared evenly with your employer, so at the average rate your own share is 8.75 percent. The Zusatzbeitrag is the one figure that genuinely differs from fund to fund, and the calculator above lets you enter your own fund's rate instead of the average. Contributions stop at 69,750 € a year, or 5,812.50 € a month, a noticeably lower ceiling than the pension one, which caps your own share at about 6,103 € for the year at the average rate. A second limit is easy to confuse with it: the Versicherungspflichtgrenze, 77,400 € a year in 2026, is the point above which leaving statutory insurance for private cover becomes possible at all. Crossing it does not move you anywhere by itself. In a job you already hold, §6 Abs. 4 SGB V keeps compulsory insurance running to the end of the calendar year, and ends it then only if your expected pay also clears the following year's threshold; a newly started job is treated differently. Even once you are free to leave, you can stay in the statutory system as a voluntary member, which many people do. So 69,750 € stops further contributions, while 77,400 € only opens a choice.

Long-term care insurance (Pflegeversicherung)

This is the branch that depends most on your family situation. The base rate is 3.6 percent, normally split 1.8 percent each. Saxony is the standing exception: it kept a public holiday the other states gave up when the insurance was introduced, so employees there pay 2.3 percent and their employer 1.3 percent, out of the same 3.6 percent total. Two further adjustments then apply to your half alone. If you are childless and 23 or over, a surcharge of 0.6 points is added that your employer does not share, taking a childless employee to 2.4 percent, or 2.9 percent in Saxony. Having had children exempts you from that surcharge for good. Separately, if you are raising more than one child under 25, your share falls by 0.25 points for each child from the second to the fifth: 0.25 points off with two children, and up to 1.00 point off with five or more. Each child counts until the end of the month in which they turn 25, so the discount shrinks as your children pass that age, even though the exemption from the childless surcharge stays. The ceiling is the health one, 69,750 € a year or 5,812.50 € a month.

Source: Rechengrößen 2026, GKV-Spitzenverband

Automatic allowances and commuting

Alongside the four branches, the wage tax calculation grants allowances automatically, so you do not have to claim them. The Arbeitnehmer-Pauschbetrag of 1,230 € covers work-related expenses, and the Sonderausgaben-Pauschbetrag adds a further 36 €. A Vorsorgepauschale for your insurance contributions is also built into the monthly withholding. If your genuine work expenses exceed 1,230 € in a year, which is common once commuting is counted, you claim the real figure in your tax return instead. From 2026 the commuting allowance is a uniform 38 cents per kilometre from the very first kilometre of your one-way distance, counted for days you actually travelled to your workplace. It reduces your taxable income rather than refunding 38 cents per kilometre, and it only changes your tax once your work expenses as a whole clear the 1,230 € Pauschbetrag that is granted automatically anyway: someone with 1,000 € of commuting costs and nothing else to claim gets no extra deduction at all. Above that line, the amount exceeding the Pauschbetrag multiplied by your marginal rate is a reasonable estimate of the tax saved, not an exact refund figure.

What your employer pays on top of your gross salary

Your gross salary is not what you cost. On top of it your employer pays its own half of all four social insurance branches. For a 50,000 € salary in 2026 that is 4,650 € pension, 650 € unemployment, 4,375 € health and 900 € long-term care, which is 10,575 €, or 21.15 percent of gross, bringing the employer's cost to 60,575 € before the smaller levies below. Employers in Saxony pay less of the care contribution, 1.3 percent instead of 1.8 percent, because employees there carry a higher share in exchange for a retained public holiday.

Three further levies come on top, and only one of them has a single nationwide figure. The Insolvenzgeldumlage, which funds wage protection in an employer insolvency, is 0.15 percent for 2026. U1, which reimburses continued pay during sickness and applies only to employers who regularly employ 30 people or fewer, and U2, which reimburses maternity-related costs and applies to every employer, are both set in the statutes of the Krankenkasse each employee is insured with, and U1 varies further with the reimbursement level the employer chooses. There is no universal rate for either, so a precise total depends on the fund. Statutory accident insurance is a further employer cost, set by each trade association rather than nationally. What the fixed part already shows is how wide the gap is: raising a 50,000 € salary to 51,000 € costs the employer about 1,212 € once their social-insurance share is added, and on the assumptions in the table above leaves the employee with about 532 € more net.

Kindergeld, the Kinderfreibetrag and single-parent relief

Kindergeld and the Kinderfreibetrag

Germany supports families through two parallel instruments and lets you benefit from only the better one. Kindergeld is a monthly payment from the Familienkasse, and from January 2026 it is 259 € per child per month, up from 255 €. It is paid regardless of income for each child who meets the conditions in §32 EStG, which for older children depend on education, training or other qualifying circumstances. The Kinderfreibetrag is the alternative: 9,756 € per child for 2026, made up of 6,828 € for the child's basic needs plus 2,928 € for care, upbringing and education. Each parent is allocated half, and transferring a half-share between parents is possible only where the statutory conditions in §32 Abs. 6 EStG are met, not by agreement alone.

You do not choose between them. When you file a tax return, the Finanzamt runs an automatic comparison called the Günstigerprüfung: it calculates your tax with the child allowances and without them, and compares the saving against your Kindergeld entitlement for the year, not merely what you happened to receive. If the allowances are worth more, the difference is credited to you. For most households the Kindergeld is worth more, and the allowances only overtake it at higher incomes. Note that the Kinderfreibetrag does not reduce your monthly wage tax at all; in payroll it only reduces the basis for solidarity surcharge and church tax.

Single-parent relief

Single parents get a separate relief, the Entlastungsbetrag für Alleinerziehende under §24b EStG. It is 4,260 € a year for the first child and a further 240 € for each additional child. The child must live in and be registered at your household and you must be entitled to Kindergeld or the Kinderfreibetrag for them. The relief is aimed at genuinely single households, so sharing a home with another adult generally rules it out where that amounts to a joint economic household; a child of your own who is still in education is among the exceptions, and where another adult is registered at the address the law works from a presumption that can be rebutted. There is a practical catch in payroll. Tax class II builds in the base 4,260 € automatically, but the extra 240 € for second and further children is not included in the monthly withholding. To benefit during the year you register it as a Freibetrag with your Finanzamt under §39a EStG; otherwise you recover it when you file.