How take-home pay is worked out

What take-home pay means

Take-home pay is what reaches your bank account after your employer withholds what the law requires. Before paying you, the employer deducts four social insurance premiums and two taxes and pays them on your behalf. The insurances are the National Pension, health insurance, long-term care insurance and employment insurance. The taxes are income tax and local income tax, which is 10% of the income tax.

Industrial accident insurance is the fourth of Korea's four major insurances, but only the employer pays it, so it never appears on your payslip. Some companies add union dues or staff association fees. This calculator deducts only the six items set by law.

The six deductions

National Pension is 9.5% of the standard monthly income, split evenly between you and your employer, so your share is 4.75%. The standard monthly income is the reported pay rounded down to the thousand won, with a floor of ₩410,000 and a ceiling of ₩6,590,000 (in force 2026-07-01 to 2027-06-30). From 2026 the rate rises by 0.5 percentage points a year until it reaches 13% in 2033.

Health insurance is 7.19% of monthly pay, split evenly, so you pay 3.595%. The monthly premium has a ceiling of ₩9,183,480 and a floor of ₩20,160, both counted on the full premium before the split. Long-term care insurance is the health premium multiplied by 0.9448% divided by 7.19%, which works out to 0.9448% of income.

Employment insurance takes 0.9% from you for the unemployment benefit account. The job security and skills development share is paid by the employer alone.

Income tax is withheld using the National Tax Service's simplified withholding table. The table is looked up by monthly taxable pay (excluding tax-free items) and by the number of dependents including yourself, and if you have children aged 8 to 20 a fixed amount per child is subtracted from the table figure. The current table was revised on 2026-02-27 and applies to pay from 2026-03-01. Local income tax is 10% of that income tax.

What this calculator does, step by step

This section describes what the code actually does, in order. An annual salary is divided by 12 and rounded down to the won to get monthly pay. The tax-free meal allowance is subtracted from monthly pay to get taxable pay, and every premium and tax is computed on that taxable pay.

For the pension, taxable pay is rounded down to the thousand won, kept between ₩410,000 and ₩6,590,000, and multiplied by 4.75%. Health insurance multiplies taxable pay by 3.595% and then keeps the employee share between ₩10,080 and ₩4,591,740. Long-term care multiplies that health premium by 0.9448% divided by 7.19%. Employment insurance is 0.9% of taxable pay.

Income tax reads the table cell for the row containing taxable pay and the column for the dependent count. The table runs from 770 thousand to 10,000 thousand won a month, and below the first row the tax is zero. At 10,000 thousand won and above, the formulas printed at the end of the table apply: the amount for exactly 10,000 thousand won plus a fixed sum per bracket plus a percentage of the excess. With 12 or more dependents, the 11-dependent figure is reduced by the difference between the 10 and 11 columns for each extra person. For children aged 8 to 20 the table amount is reduced by ₩20,830 for one child, ₩45,830 for two, and a further ₩33,330 for each child after that, never below zero.

Local income tax is 10% of the income tax. All six lines are rounded down to the nearest 10 won. Take-home pay is monthly pay including the meal allowance minus the six deductions, and the annual figure is twelve times that.

Copying the result link only appends the numbers you typed to the address. Nothing is stored on a server; whoever opens the link gets the same calculation run again on their own screen.

Filling in the form

Count yourself as 1 and add your spouse and each dependent. The rule is the same as the basic deduction in Article 50 of the Income Tax Act, so the most accurate number is the one you wrote on the deduction form you gave your employer. For children, count only those aged 8 to 20 who are already included in that number.

The tax-free meal allowance applies when the employer pays a meal allowance as a separate pay item instead of providing meals, up to ₩200,000 a month. If your payslip has no separate meal line, leave it at 0. Other tax-free items such as a car allowance or childcare allowance have no field here.

If your contract folds severance pay into the annual salary, dividing by 13 rather than 12 is closer to your monthly pay. In that case switch to the monthly mode and type that amount directly.

Getting closer to your payslip

The table amount is not your final tax. It is a monthly prepayment that gets settled in the year-end tax adjustment the following year, when you get back what you overpaid or pay what you underpaid. Two people on the same salary can end up with different results after that settlement.

You can ask your employer to withhold 80% or 120% of the table amount instead of 100%. If you never asked, it is 100%, which is all this calculator shows.

In a month with a bonus, the tax office's rules spread the bonus over the period it covers and recompute the tax, so that month's income tax differs from this result. Pension and health premiums are charged on the pay your employer reported and are settled once a year, so in your first year or after a raise the figures here will not match your payslip exactly.

Where people get stuck

A difference of a few thousand won usually means extra tax-free items, a different reported pay base, or different rounding. A difference of tens of thousands of won usually means a different dependent count or a month with a bonus.

Foreign employees can elect a flat-rate special taxation under the Restriction of Special Taxation Act. This calculator does not model that election, so if you filed for it, your income tax will differ.

This is not tax advice. For disputes, ask your payroll staff, the National Tax Service helpline (126), or a tax professional.