🧾 Personal Income Tax & Your Take-Home Pay
A plain-language guide to how individuals are taxed — decode your paycheck, master marginal vs. effective brackets, handle self-employment and quarterly taxes, and understand capital gains and deductions, applying each idea with a matching calculator.
Last updated: June 2026
A plain-language guide to how individuals are taxed — decode your paycheck, master marginal vs. effective brackets, handle self-employment and quarterly taxes, and understand capital gains and deductions, applying each idea with a matching calculator. The course is organized into 11 modules, ending with a final exam (pass mark 80%). It is independent, free exam-preparation training — not an official or accredited review course.
What you'll learn
- Anatomy of a Paycheck: Gross to Net
- Marginal vs. Effective Tax Rates
- Withholding and the W-4
- FICA: Social Security & Medicare
- W-2 vs. 1099: The Self-Employment Shift
- Quarterly Estimated Taxes
- Capital Gains: Short-Term vs. Long-Term
- The Standard Deduction & Itemizing
- Tracking Deductibles: Business Mileage
- PTO Payouts, Bonuses & Supplemental Pay
- Putting It Together: Your Annual Tax Picture
Learning objectives
- Read a pay stub line by line and explain how gross pay becomes net pay.
- Distinguish marginal tax brackets from your effective (average) tax rate and compute both.
- Explain federal income tax withholding, state withholding, and the role of Form W-4.
- Identify FICA taxes (Social Security and Medicare) and how they differ from income tax.
- Compare W-2 employment to 1099 self-employment, including the extra self-employment (SE) tax.
- Plan and pay quarterly estimated taxes to avoid underpayment penalties.
- Classify capital gains as short-term or long-term and estimate the tax owed on a sale.
- Choose between the standard deduction and itemizing, and track deductibles like business mileage.