ILLINOIS PAYCHECK CALCULATOR
Quick answer: on a $70,000 salary in Illinois, filing Single, you take home roughly $54,755 a year, which works out to about $2,106 every two weeks on a biweekly schedule.
Illinois charges one flat rate on nearly all income, with a small personal exemption instead of a standard deduction. Scroll down to plug in your own numbers.
Illinois’s income tax is one of the more stable, unchanging pieces of its tax code. The flat 4.95% rate has held since 2017, and it is written into the state constitution, which requires that everyone pay the exact same rate regardless of income. That protection got tested directly in November 2020, when voters rejected a ballot measure that would have replaced the flat rate with graduated brackets, by a 55% to 45% margin. What has not stayed flat is everything around that income tax. The Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index ranks Illinois 38th out of 50 states, a result driven mostly by property taxes that are tied with New Jersey for the highest effective rate in the country at 1.88%, and a combined sales tax averaging close to 8.96% once state and local rates stack together.
What lands on an Illinois paystub is straightforward, if a little different from most states. Federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare come out first, same as anywhere else. Illinois state tax follows, but instead of a standard deduction, Illinois starts from federal adjusted gross income and subtracts a personal exemption, $2,925 per filer and per dependent for 2026, before applying the flat 4.95% rate. There is no local income tax anywhere in the state, Chicago included, and no state disability insurance or paid family leave deduction either. If you are comparing Illinois against a move, its neighbors run the gamut: see the Indiana paycheck calculator for one of the lowest flat rates in the country, or the Iowa paycheck calculator for a state that only recently finished its own move to a flat rate.
Illinois Paycheck Calculator
How the Federal Number Was Worked Out
Take the default example above, a single filer earning $70,000 a year with no other adjustments. Here is exactly how the federal piece gets built, step by step, using the 2026 IRS brackets and the $16,100 single standard deduction. Note that this federal standard deduction does not carry over to the Illinois side, since Illinois uses its own personal exemption system instead.
Step 1. $70,000 gross minus the $16,100 standard deduction leaves $53,900 in federal taxable income.
Step 2. The first $12,400 is taxed at 10%, which comes to $1,240.
Step 3. The next chunk, from $12,400 to $50,400, is taxed at 12%. That is $38,000 taxed at 12%, or $4,560.
Step 4. The remaining $3,500, from $50,400 up to the $53,900 taxable income figure, is taxed at 22%, adding $770.
Step 5. Add it up: $1,240 + $4,560 + $770 = $6,570 in federal income tax, an effective federal rate of about 9.4% on the full $70,000.
On the Illinois side, the same $70,000 gross income only loses the $2,925 personal exemption, not the $16,100 federal standard deduction, before the flat 4.95% rate applies.
Illinois vs Nearby States at $70,000 (Single Filer)
These numbers assume a single filer with no dependents, using each state’s own deduction or exemption system, with no local or city-level tax added.
| State | State Income Tax | Effective State Rate | Est. Net Pay* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | $3,320 | 4.74% | $54,755 |
| Indiana | $2,036 | 2.91% | $56,039 |
| Iowa | $2,048 | 2.93% | $56,027 |
*Net pay estimate includes federal tax and FICA at $70,000 gross, single filer, before any local or city-level tax. Indiana’s figure excludes county-level income taxes, which most Indiana counties add on top of the state’s flat rate and which can add several hundred dollars more depending on the county.
Indiana’s 2.95% flat rate and Iowa’s 3.8% flat rate both undercut Illinois at this income level, even after accounting for the fact that Iowa now folds the federal standard deduction into its own starting point, which shrinks its taxable base considerably. Illinois’s personal exemption of $2,925 is small by comparison, which is why its effective rate sits closer to its statutory 4.95% than either neighbor’s does to its own headline rate. None of these three states charge a local income tax that follows you home the way Ohio or Pennsylvania municipalities can, though Indiana’s county-level income taxes are a real exception worth checking if a specific county is in play.
Where Your Paycheck Money Actually Goes
Picture that same $70,000 salary landing as a biweekly paycheck of $2,692.31 before anything is taken out. Here is the order things get pulled, and what is left standing at the end.
Federal income tax comes off first, working out to roughly $252.69 per biweekly check based on the annual $6,570 figure above.
Social Security takes 6.2% of every check up until your year-to-date wages hit the 2026 wage base of $184,500. On $2,692.31, that is $166.92 gone.
Medicare takes 1.45% with no cap at all, which is $39.04 on this check. The extra 0.9% Medicare surtax only kicks in once your total wages for the year pass $200,000 for a single filer, so it does not apply here.
Illinois state tax, based on the roughly $3,320 annual figure, works out to about $127.70 per biweekly check.
There is no state disability, paid family leave, or local city tax on a standard Illinois paystub anywhere in the state, Chicago included. Add those four deductions together and about $586.35 disappears from the $2,692.31 gross, leaving a net paycheck of roughly $2,105.96 every two weeks, or $54,754.79 across the full year.
Illinois’s Flat Tax and Cross-Border Reciprocity
Illinois has taxed income at a single flat rate since a 1969 constitutional convention required uniform taxation, and the current 4.95% rate dates to July 2017, when it rose from 3.75% as part of a budget deal aimed at closing the state’s chronic deficit. That structure has proven durable specifically because changing it takes a constitutional amendment, not just a new law, and voters had the direct chance to remove that protection in 2020 and declined to. The personal exemption that stands in for a standard deduction gets a small annual adjustment: it rose from $2,850 to $2,925 for 2026, and it phases out entirely for single filers with federal AGI above $250,000, or joint filers above $500,000.
One quirk worth knowing if you live near a border: Illinois has income tax reciprocity agreements with four neighboring states, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If you live in Illinois and work in one of those four, or live in one of those four and work in Illinois, you only owe income tax to your state of residence, not both. File an exemption certificate with your employer to stop the other state’s withholding. Indiana is notably absent from that list despite sharing a long border and a huge daily commuter flow with the Chicago area, so an Illinois resident working in Gary or Hammond does not get the same automatic pass and needs to sort out credits between the two states instead.
How Illinois’s Tax Burden Stacks Up
| Tax Type | Illinois | National Picture |
|---|---|---|
| Income tax | Flat 4.95%, constitutionally protected | Nine states charge no income tax at all; several charge over 9% |
| Combined sales tax | Roughly 8.96% average (6.25% state plus local add-ons) | National average sits close to 7.5%, so Illinois runs above it |
| Property tax | Roughly 1.88% effective rate, tied for the highest in the nation | National average sits close to 0.9% to 1.1% |
| Estate tax | Illinois levies its own state estate tax, separate from the federal one | Most states have no estate tax at all |
Property tax is really the story of Illinois’s tax burden. The state leans harder on it than almost anywhere else in the country, a product of hundreds of overlapping taxing districts, counties, municipalities, school districts, and more, all levying against the same assessed value, plus significant local pension obligations. Rates vary enormously by county, from under 1% in parts of southern Illinois to well over 2% in parts of Cook County and the collar counties. The flat, moderate income tax and the fact that groceries are taxed at a reduced 1% rate rather than the full 6.25% state rate both work in the other direction, but for most homeowners, property tax is where an Illinois tax bill actually gets heavy.
Retirees in Illinois
Illinois is one of the more generous states in the country when it comes to taxing retirement income, which sits oddly alongside its reputation for high property taxes. Social Security benefits are completely exempt from Illinois income tax at every income level. So is pension income, whether it comes from a government plan, a private employer plan, or the military. Distributions from 401(k) accounts and IRAs are exempt too, which means a retiree living entirely off Social Security, a pension, and retirement account withdrawals can end up owing little or no Illinois income tax on that income at all, even though the same dollars would be at least partially taxed in many other states. The tradeoff, as with working residents, is property tax: a retiree who owns a home outright still faces one of the highest effective property tax rates in the country, though Illinois’s Senior Citizens Assessment Freeze Homestead Exemption can help qualifying older homeowners limit how fast their assessed value, and therefore their bill, climbs from year to year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Illinois’s state income tax rate for 2026?
Illinois charges a flat 4.95% on taxable income for 2026, the same rate it has used since 2017. The rate is protected by the state constitution, which requires a uniform rate for everyone. Voters rejected a 2020 ballot measure that would have allowed graduated rates, by a 55% to 45% margin.
Does Illinois have a standard deduction?
No. Illinois does not use a standard deduction at all. Instead, it starts from federal adjusted gross income and subtracts a personal exemption of $2,925 per filer and per dependent for 2026, up from $2,850 the year before. This exemption phases out once federal AGI passes $250,000 for single filers or $500,000 for joint filers.
Does Chicago have its own local income tax?
No. Chicago does not levy any local income tax on residents or workers, unlike New York City, Philadelphia, or several Ohio cities. The flat 4.95% state rate is the only income tax most Chicago-area workers pay, though Chicago does add its own local sales tax and several city-specific fees.
Is Illinois a good state for taxes overall?
Illinois ranks 38th out of 50 states on the Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index. Its flat, moderate income tax helps, but the state’s property taxes are tied for the highest effective rate in the country at 1.88%, and its combined sales tax runs above the national average at roughly 8.96%.
Does Illinois tax Social Security and retirement income?
No. Illinois fully exempts Social Security benefits, pension income from government and private plans, and distributions from 401(k) and IRA accounts. This makes Illinois one of the more retirement-tax-friendly states in the country, despite its flat 4.95% rate on wages and other ordinary income.
Do Illinois residents who work in a neighboring state pay tax twice?
Not if they work in Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, or Wisconsin. Illinois has reciprocity agreements with those four states, so a resident of one who works in the other only pays income tax to their home state. Indiana is not on that list, though, so an Illinois resident commuting into Indiana for work does not get the same automatic exemption.
Illinois’s tax code trades simplicity on the income side for real weight on the property side. A single flat rate, a small personal exemption, and no local income tax anywhere make the paycheck math about as easy to predict as any state in the country. What that math does not capture is the property tax bill waiting on the other side of a home purchase, which is where Illinois genuinely stands apart, for better or worse, from almost everywhere else.