Illinois taxes income at a flat 4.95%, the same rate whatever you earn and whatever your filing status. This Illinois paycheck calculator applies that rate the way your employer does, after taking off $2,925 for each allowance you claim on Form IL-W-4.
Nothing else comes out at state level. Illinois funds unemployment insurance entirely from employers, and there is no disability or paid family leave contribution, so your Illinois take-home pay is a genuinely short sum: gross pay, minus federal tax and FICA, minus 4.95% of what is left after allowances.
No city in Illinois taxes your wages
This is worth saying plainly, because Illinois is surrounded by states where it is not true. Not one Illinois municipality levies an income tax on wages, so unlike a reader in Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania you have nothing further to look up. The figure above is the whole state and local picture.
Chicago does not charge a city income tax either, despite how often people expect it to. The city raises its money through property and sales taxes instead, neither of which touches your paycheck.
What a flat rate means for your take-home pay
A single rate makes Illinois easy to predict and blunt in effect. There is no lower band sheltering the first slice of what you earn, so a modest wage pays close to the same percentage as a large one.
- On $45,000 with one allowance, Illinois takes about $2,083, an effective rate of 4.63%.
- On $60,000, about $2,825, or 4.71%.
- On $90,000, about $4,310, or 4.79%.
The gap between those and the headline 4.95% is entirely your allowance. That is the only relief Illinois offers, which makes it worth more attention than its size suggests.
Allowances are the only lever you have
Each allowance on line 1 of Form IL-W-4 is worth $2,925 off your taxable wages, which is about $145 a year in your pocket. Claim one for yourself, one for a spouse who is not claiming themselves elsewhere, and one for each dependent.
A family of four claiming four allowances keeps roughly $579 a year that would otherwise go out with every paycheck. If your IL-W-4 has not been revisited since a child arrived or a marriage, it is a few minutes well spent, and the change shows up on your next pay run rather than as a refund next April.
Worth knowing: Form IL-W-4 has a second line of allowances, worth $1,000 each, for being 65 or over or legally blind. This calculator has one allowance field and prices everything at the line 1 rate, so if you claim line 2 allowances your employer will take slightly less than shown here. The difference is about $50 a year per allowance.
Illinois paycheck calculator FAQ
Illinois takes a flat 4.95% of your wages after allowances, which works out to an effective rate of about 4.7% on a $60,000 salary. Federal income tax and 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare come out on top. There is no local income tax anywhere in Illinois.
A flat 4.95% for everyone, unchanged for 2026. Illinois has no brackets and no variation by filing status, so a single filer and a married couple on the same wage with the same allowances have exactly the same amount withheld.
No. Chicago levies no income tax on wages, and neither does any other Illinois municipality. The city funds itself mainly through property and sales taxes, so nothing local appears on an Illinois pay stub.
Most people claim one for themselves, one for a spouse not claiming themselves elsewhere, and one per dependent. Each is worth $2,925 off your taxable wages, or about $145 a year. Claiming fewer than you are entitled to means overpaying every payday and waiting for a refund.