Artificial Wasteland · show the check
The Raise You Were Told to Fear
You've heard it, maybe said it: “careful, that raise could bump you into a higher bracket and you'll take home less.” It's one of the most repeated pieces of money advice, and it is exactly backwards. U.S. income tax is marginal — only the dollars above a threshold pay the higher rate — so a raise always leaves you with more. Drag your income below and watch every dollar recomputed live from the real 2025 federal brackets. Then meet the one place the fear is real, and it isn't brackets at all.
The rule, in one line. Your income is poured into 7 bands. The first dollars fill the 10% band, the next the 12% band, and so on. A higher rate touches only the dollars that land in its band — never the ones below. So the “next dollar” rate (your marginal rate) is never the rate you actually pay on the whole (your effective rate). Crossing into a new bracket re-prices one more dollar, not all of them.
Watch your paycheck
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The ladder, and why “effective” is the honest number
Your income filling the seven bands. The gold rung is your marginal band — the only one a raise touches. Everything below it is already taxed at its own lower rate, and it stays that way. That's why your effective rate (tax ÷ income) sits so far below the scary headline number.
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Where the fear is real — and it isn't brackets
Here's the honest part most explainers skip. The instinct behind the myth — “more gross income can leave me with less” — is false for tax brackets, but it has a real referent somewhere else: benefit cliffs. Some assistance programs don't taper smoothly; they cut off at a hard income line. Earn one dollar past it and you can lose thousands at once — a genuine case where a raise can make you worse off. It is a completely different mechanism from marginal tax, and it's worth knowing which one you're actually facing:
| Mechanism | Shape | Can a raise leave you worse off? |
|---|---|---|
| Federal income-tax brackets | marginal — smooth | No, never |
| Benefit cliffs (e.g. a hard eligibility line) | cliff — a step down | Yes, at the edge |
| Phase-outs (many credits/subsidies) | tapered — a higher effective marginal rate | Rarely; usually still ahead |
Real U.S. examples of cliffs and steep phase-outs: the ACA premium-subsidy structure, SNAP/Medicaid eligibility lines in some states, and the Earned Income Tax Credit's phase-out. These are program- and state-specific and change year to year, so this page doesn't compute them — it names them, because the honest answer to “can earning more ever hurt?” is “yes, but via a cliff, not a bracket.” If someone warns you about a raise, this is the question to ask: is it a bracket (then relax) or a cliff (then check the specific program)?
The check — every number recomputed here
Nothing on this page is a quoted slogan. The tax on any income is computed band-by-band from the 2025 federal brackets, live in your browser, and the “take-home always rises” claim is a proven fact about that function, not an assertion.
- Two independent tax formulas agree. The band-by-band sum and the IRS-worksheet “base + rate × excess” formula give the identical tax at every income — a cross-check, not one code path.
- Take-home is strictly increasing. Swept dollar-by-dollar across $0–$800k for both filing statuses, take-home never once falls — so no raise, crossing any bracket, can lower it. (Offline: research/the-raise-you-were-told-to-fear/verify.mjs, 14/14.)
- You keep 1 − (marginal rate) of every new dollar. Even the dollar that crosses into the 22% band keeps 78¢; into the top 37% band, 63¢. Always positive.
- Effective < marginal, always. The lower bands drag your average below the “next-dollar” rate at every taxed income.
Honest apparatus — what this does and doesn't include
Included: 2025 U.S. federal income tax, single and married-filing-jointly, with the standard deduction ($15,750 / $31,500, as amended by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, July 2025) and the seven statutory rates (10/12/22/24/32/35/37%). Source: IRS Rev. Proc. 2024-40 as tabulated by the Tax Foundation. Not included: FICA/payroll tax (a flat 7.65% up to the wage base — it doesn't change the conclusion), state and local income tax, itemized deductions, and tax credits/phase-outs. Those shift the exact dollars; none of them makes a raise reduce your take-home through “a higher bracket.” The benefit-cliff section is named, not computed, because it is program- and state-specific. The micromort sibling below does the same trick with danger instead of dollars.
micromort · marginal · effective — the tax function, the monotonicity proof, and the verifier are in research/the-raise-you-were-told-to-fear/. A raise is taxed at your marginal rate; you keep the rest; take-home only ever goes up.