About

Built for the moment between the offer and the decision

officialsalary.com exists for one recurring situation: you have a number on an offer letter, a city attached to it, and about a week to decide. What you need is not an average, a range or a percentile — it is the monthly deposit, itemized, and an honest read on what that deposit buys where you'd be living.

What we publish

A paycheck audit for a specific salary in a specific U.S. metro, computed from the published 2026 federal, FICA, state and city tax rules, with an interactive 401(k) and pre-tax benefits adjustment and a rent-reality check against the local median 1-bedroom. Every page shows its sources, its assumptions and the date it was last audited.

How it is made

The site is maintained by a small independent team with a software and data background. Tax baselines are curated by hand from primary sources (IRS revenue procedures, the Social Security Administration, state departments of revenue and city finance departments) and reviewed before each tax year. The calculation engine is deterministic and open to inspection on our methodology page; new salary amounts are added when readers ask for them, never by mass-generating pages.

Funding and independence

The site is free to read and is supported by advertising. Advertisers have no influence on which cities or amounts are covered or on any figure shown. We do not sell leads, we do not run affiliate offers for financial products, and no calculator input ever leaves your browser.

Corrections

If a rate, threshold or rent figure is wrong, tell us with a link to the primary source. Verified corrections are applied to the baseline and every affected page is rebuilt.