Per Diem Pay Calculator
Split a travel paycheck into taxable wages and untaxed per diem, then see federal tax, FICA, state tax, take-home pay, and your blended hourly rate.
Per Diem Pay Calculator
Taxable Hourly Pay
This is the W-2 wage half of a travel package, the rate your agency actually runs through payroll. Overtime is not modeled here.
Pay Period
Travel contracts almost always pay weekly. The period you pick sets how the taxable half is annualized for the bracket math.
Per Diem Your Employer Pays
Count only the days you were away from your tax home overnight. On the first and last travel day the federal M&IE rate is 75% of the daily figure, so drop those part days out of the count or lower the rate yourself.
Federal Rate to Compare Against
This is the tax-free ceiling. Look up your city on the GSA per diem tables and type the exact figure if you are in a non-standard area, where lodging plus M&IE can clear $400 a day.
Per Diem Setup
Filing Status & State Rate
Enter your state's effective income tax rate. The nine no-income-tax states use 0%. Typical effective rates run 3 to 5 percent.
The taxable-equivalent rate uses your marginal tax stack, not your average rate, because an extra dollar of wages is taxed at the top of the pile. That is why it sits above the plain per-hour value of the stipend.
Estimates only for tax year 2026. This models annual tax liability, not your employer's Pub 15-T withholding, and it is not tax or legal advice. Talk to a tax professional about your own tax home and accountable plan before relying on these figures.
Track a Travel Contract in ClockWage44
Every job in ClockWage44 has an Additional Income list, and each entry is flagged taxable or non-taxable, which is exactly the shape of a per diem split. Enter the untaxed allowance as non-taxable and any excess as taxable. The on-device paycheck engine folds both into the same take-home figure as your logged shifts, across all 50 states plus DC.
Taxable Wages vs Untaxed Per Diem: How the Split Works
A travel paycheck has two halves that behave nothing alike. The first is an hourly wage that runs through payroll like any other job. The second is a per diem, stipend, or allowance meant to cover lodging, meals, and incidentals while you are away from home. Agencies structure packages this way because the second half can land in your account untouched by tax.
That treatment is not automatic. IRS Publication 463 requires an accountable plan, which has three tests: a business connection for the expense, substantiation of the time, place, and business purpose within a reasonable period, and return of any excess advance. Clear all three, stay at or below the federal per diem rate for the city you are working in, and the money is not wages at all.
Your W-2 shows where each half landed. The federal-rate portion appears only as a box 12 code L memo when you report expenses. Any taxable portion goes into boxes 1, 3 and 5, which means income tax, Social Security, and Medicare all apply to it.
At this page's defaults the split is clean: $25 an hour for 36 hours is $900 in taxable wages, and $181 a day for 7 days is $1,267 in untaxed per diem, for a $2,167 package with no taxable excess. Raise the per diem to $200 a day and $19 a day, or $133 for the week, moves over to the wage side. If you want to confirm your employer actually coded the line that way, the pay stub checker walks through the stub line by line.
The Federal Per Diem Rates Your Employer Is Measured Against
The benchmark is the General Services Administration rate for the location you travelled to. The standard CONUS rate was $178 a day for travel through September 30, 2026, made up of $110 lodging and $68 meals and incidentals. For travel on or after October 1, 2026 it is $181 a day, with lodging rising to $113 and M&IE holding at $68.
About 295 non-standard areas have their own figures. Their M&IE tiers are $68, $74, $80, $86 and $92, and lodging in expensive markets runs far above the standard figure, so a per diem that looks generous against $181 can still sit under the local ceiling. Look your city up before deciding you have a taxable excess.
Two other rules change the number. On the first and last day of travel, the federal M&IE allowance is 75% of the daily rate, which is $51 at the $68 tier. And the IRS high-low method lets an employer skip city lookups entirely by using one of two figures: $319 a day for high-cost localities and $225 for everywhere else in CONUS, with M&IE-only figures of $86 and $74. Those come from Notice 2025-54 and cover travel from October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026.
Picking the wrong benchmark is an easy way to miscalculate the taxable portion. Someone on a meal-only stipend who compares against the combined $181 will see no excess where there is one, because the right ceiling for them is the M&IE figure alone.
When a Tax-Free Stipend Stops Being Tax Free
Everything above assumes you have a tax home. Your tax home is the whole city or general area of your main place of work, not the address on your driver's license. The reason stipends escape tax is that you are paying twice: keeping a residence in one place while living somewhere else for work. Take the duplicate cost away and the justification disappears with it.
The temporary-assignment test in Publication 463 asks whether the work is realistically expected to last one year or less. If it is, the location is temporary. If the assignment is expected from the start to run longer, or your expectation changes partway through, the work becomes indefinite and stipends turn into wages from that point forward. The often-repeated rule about 12 months in any 24-month period is industry habit, not the IRS standard.
A worker with no fixed residence is itinerant, has no tax home, and is therefore never away from home. For that person every stipend is taxable wages, which is what the second setup chip above models.
The cost of getting this wrong is bigger than it looks, because the reclassified amount is wages for FICA and state tax as well as federal income tax. A package that reads 30% better than a staff role can shrink quickly. The same accountable-plan logic governs vehicle payments, and the mileage reimbursement calculator applies it at the trip level where this page applies it at the paycheck level. If you want both halves living next to your logged shifts instead of in a spreadsheet, the ClockWage44 app flags each income entry taxable or non-taxable and runs the paycheck math on-device.
How This Is Calculated
The per diem split comes first. Under an accountable plan the untaxed amount is the lower of your per diem and the federal rate, times the number of days, and anything above the federal rate is taxable wages. In the no-plan or no-tax-home mode the whole allowance is wages. Either way the two halves add back to exactly what your employer paid.
Taxable wages are then annualized. The calculator multiplies the taxable half by the number of pay periods in a year, subtracts the 2026 standard deduction for your filing status ($16,100 single and married filing separately, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household), runs the result through the 2026 federal brackets, and divides the annual figure back down to one period. That assumes every period looks like the one you entered, which holds for a steady contract and not for someone whose hours swing.
FICA follows the same annualized base: 6.2% Social Security up to the $184,500 wage base for 2026, plus 1.45% Medicare and the extra 0.9% above $200,000 for single and head of household filers, $250,000 for joint filers, and $125,000 for married filing separately. Untaxed per diem never enters that base, the bracket math, or the state base. State tax is a single effective rate you supply rather than a 50-state engine, and most states follow the federal accountable-plan treatment, though a handful decouple, so check yours.
Three things are deliberately left out. This estimates annual tax liability rather than Pub 15-T withholding, so there are no W-4 steps or allowances. There is no overtime input, because premium hours pull in a separate set of rules: use the overtime calculator or the blended overtime calculator for that side. And the 75% first-and-last-day M&IE proration is not applied automatically, so adjust your day count for part days. Everything here is an estimate for tax year 2026, not tax or legal advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about per diem pay calculator
Is per diem taxable?
Not if three things are true at once: your employer pays it under an accountable plan, the amount is at or below the federal per diem rate, and you are away from your tax home overnight. In that case it is excluded from wages entirely, so no income tax and no FICA. It shows on your W-2 only as a box 12 code L memo. Miss any one of those conditions and the payment becomes wages. Once you know how big the taxable half is, run it through the take-home pay calculator.
What makes per diem taxable?
Pay above the federal rate and the excess is taxed. Skip the accountable plan and the whole allowance is taxed. Publication 463 defines that plan by three requirements: a business connection, substantiation of the time, place, and business purpose within a reasonable period, and return of any excess advance. Have no tax home, or an assignment that stopped being temporary, and the same thing happens. Any one of those turns the allowance into ordinary wages reported in W-2 boxes 1, 3 and 5.
Do I pay Social Security and Medicare on per diem?
Not on the untaxed portion. It never enters the FICA base at all, which is the mechanical reason a stipend dollar beats an hourly dollar. A taxable portion lands in W-2 boxes 3 and 5 instead, and takes the full 7.65% employee share, meaning 6.2% Social Security on wages up to the $184,500 base for 2026 plus 1.45% Medicare with no cap. High earners add 0.9%. The FICA tax calculator prices out what a taxable excess costs in payroll tax.
What is the federal per diem rate for 2026?
The GSA standard CONUS rate is $178 a day ($110 lodging plus $68 meals and incidentals) for travel through September 30, 2026, and $181 a day ($113 plus $68) for travel on or after October 1, 2026. Roughly 295 non-standard areas pay more, with M&IE tiers of $68, $74, $80, $86 and $92. The IRS high-low shortcut in Notice 2025-54 sets $319 a day for high-cost localities and $225 for the rest of CONUS, covering travel through September 30, 2026.
What happens if my per diem is higher than the federal rate?
Only the excess is taxable. Say your agency pays $200 a day for 7 days against a $181 federal rate. The federal-rate share, $1,267, stays tax free and appears in box 12 code L. The remaining $19 a day, or $133 for the period, is wages: it goes in boxes 1, 3 and 5 and picks up income tax plus 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare, with your state rate on top. Type a per day figure above the comparison rate and the calculator splits it for you.
What is a tax home, and why does it decide whether my stipend is tax free?
Your tax home is the entire city or general area of your main place of work, not the town where your family lives. Keeping stipends tax free generally means you maintain a real residence in that area, carry duplicate living costs while on assignment, and go back to work there. A worker who moves from contract to contract with no fixed base is itinerant and has no tax home. With no home to be away from, every stipend is taxable wages.
How long can I stay on an assignment before per diem becomes taxable?
Publication 463 asks whether the assignment is realistically expected to last one year or less. If it is, the location is temporary and stipends can stay tax free. Longer than a year, or once your expectation changes partway through, the work is indefinite and the stipends become taxable wages from the point the expectation changed. The widely repeated line about 12 months in any 24-month period is industry practice, not the IRS test, so do not plan around it.
What is a blended rate, and is a high stipend better than a high hourly rate?
A blended rate spreads the whole package, taxable wages plus untaxed stipend, across the hours you actually work. Untaxed dollars are worth more than the same gross wage dollars because they skip income tax and FICA, which is exactly what the taxable-equivalent rate on this page measures. There is a catch. Stipends do not build Social Security credits, and lenders often ignore them on a mortgage application. The job offer comparison calculator weighs a stipend-heavy contract against a staff role.