Germany Salary Calculator

Take a gross of €55,000 in 2026. What lands in the account (the Nettolohn) works out at roughly €34,300 a year, or about €2,860 a month. Around €9,100 of that gap is Lohnsteuer; the remaining €11,600 or so is social insurance covering health, pension, unemployment and long-term care.

Social insurance is the heavier of the two at this level, taking something like 21% of gross on its own. It is not wasted from a tax point of view, though: those contributions come off the figure the Lohnsteuer is calculated on.

Germany does not use flat brackets. Tax is set by a formula that raises the rate continuously as income climbs, which produces roughly these effective bands:
0% up to €11,784, the Grundfreibetrag
about 14 to 24% from €11,785 to €22,000
about 24 to 42% from €22,001 to €66,760
42% from €66,761 to €277,825
45% above €277,825, the so-called Reichensteuersatz

The employee half for 2026 breaks down like this:
Pension, Rentenversicherung: 9.3% on earnings up to €90,600
Health, Krankenversicherung: 8.75% up to €66,150, using the average statutory rate
Unemployment, Arbeitslosenversicherung: 1.3% up to €90,600
Long-term care, Pflegeversicherung: 1.7%, or 2.2% if you have no children, up to €66,150

Every employee in Germany sits in one of six tax classes, and the class decides how much is withheld each month rather than how much is finally owed:
Class I: single, widowed or divorced
Class III: married, the higher earner
Class IV: married, both earning much the same
Class V: married, the lower earner
The figures here assume Steuerklasse I. Married couples who use the splitting method, Ehegattensplitting, often end up paying considerably less between them.

Mostly it does not. The Solidaritätszuschlag was cut back sharply in 2021 and now reaches only the top 3.5% or so of earners, meaning an income tax bill above roughly €18,130 a year, which usually implies a gross somewhere north of €67,000. Where it does bite, it is charged at 5.5% of the income tax owed rather than of the salary.

The calculator only adds Soli at the income levels where it is still due.