Payroll & Take-Home Pay

Five calculators sit under this section, and they all answer the same question — what does this job actually pay? — from five different starting points. Which one you want depends less on how much you earn than on how you're paid and where you file.

For an employee the deductions are automatic and non-negotiable: federal tax, provincial tax, CPP at 5.95% of pensionable earnings, and EI at 1.63% of insurable earnings up to $68,900 for the year. Ontario stacks a surtax and the Ontario Health Premium on top, which is why an Ontario salary nets less than the same salary somewhere with comparable headline brackets. If you have an annual figure and want the net, take-home pay is the starting point. If what you have is an hourly wage, hourly to salary converts it first. If you already know your net and only want to know what changes, pay raise costs the difference rather than the whole.

Two forks send you somewhere else entirely. The first is whether you're on a T4 at all — self-employment changes the arithmetic, not just the amount. You pay both halves of CPP, which tops out at $8,460.90 against an employee's $4,230.45; EI becomes something you opt into rather than something withheld; and once your taxable revenue passes $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or across four consecutive ones, you're no longer a small supplier and GST/HST registration follows. The self-employed tax calculator handles that set of rules and the quarterly instalments that come with it.

The second is Quebec, the one province that diverges far enough to warrant a calculator of its own. Its pension plan, its parental insurance and its return are all separate from the federal machinery: QPP is levied at 6.3% where the rest of the country pays 5.95% to CPP, QPIP shows up as an extra line on the stub, and federal EI is discounted to 1.30% precisely because QPIP has taken parental leave off its hands. Quebec income tax works in those terms. Everywhere else, the province only decides which brackets apply, and the general tools cover all thirteen jurisdictions from one selector.

All five share the same 2026 rates engine, so the numbers agree with each other — a raise priced here matches a salary priced next door, and neither drifts from the figures on the extra income pages. What they produce is an annual estimate built on employment income and the basic personal amount alone. Union dues, an RRSP deducted at source, a company pension, a second job or a spouse's credits will all move your real cheque, and payroll deductions are themselves only a running estimate — the return you file is what settles the year.