Take-home pay on a $150,000 salary in Iowa

What applies to you at $150,000, and what does not

New-car loan interest is no longer deductible at $150,000

OBBBA made interest on a qualifying new-vehicle loan deductible up to $10,000 a year, even without itemizing — but only below $150,000 of modified AGI for a single filer. The deduction falls by $200 for every $1,000 above $100,000 and is gone by $150,000, which $150,000 is at or above. Worth knowing before a dealer quotes it as a reason to finance.

$150,000 is under the mandatory-Roth catch-up line

From 2026, a worker over $150,000 of prior-year Social Security wages with one employer must take their age-50-plus 401(k) catch-up as Roth instead of pre-tax. At $150,000 you are $0 below that threshold, so the catch-up is still yours to make pre-tax and still reduces the federal bill shown above. It is the next rung up this ladder that loses it.

The tips and overtime deductions are shrinking at $150,000

OBBBA's deductions for qualified tips (up to $25,000) and the FLSA overtime premium (up to $12,500) both start phasing out at $150,000 of modified AGI for a single filer, at $100 per $1,000 over. At $150,000 that leaves roughly $25,000 of the tips allowance and $12,500 of the overtime one. Neither touches FICA either way: Social Security and Medicare are still charged on tips and overtime in full.

Where local wage taxes sit relative to this figure

The $108,703 above is what $150,000 leaves after federal withholding, FICA and Iowa state withholding, and nothing else. Anything a city, county or school district levies on wages sits outside that figure, and whether any of it reaches your paycheck is a municipal question rather than a state one — so it is not modelled here. Iowa's own published position is below.

Iowa school districts levy a local income surtax assessed as a percentage of state income tax liability (up to 20%), not of income. About 87% of districts impose it; the income-weighted average is roughly 0.3%. Six counties (Appanoose, Cass, Pocahontas, Sac, Shelby, Winnebago) also use a surtax for EMS. It is filed with the state IA 1040 return based on the district you reside in on the last day of the tax year.

What deferring the maximum is worth at $150,000

The 2026 cap on elective deferrals, $24,500, works out at 16.3% of this salary. That makes it both achievable and unusually valuable: the dollars you defer are the top dollars, charged at 24% federally and 3.8% in Iowa, not at an average of every band below. It is the largest single lever over the figures on this page, and it leaves FICA exactly where it was.

If you are 65 or over, $150,000 has already cut your senior deduction

OBBBA's $6,000-per-person senior deduction starts shrinking above $75,000 of modified AGI, at 6.0% of every dollar over the line. At $150,000 you are $75,000 into that phase-out, leaving roughly $1,500 of the deduction, and it disappears entirely at $175,000. The figures on this page do not include it — they model a filer under 65 — but it is the one deduction at this income level that a raise quietly erodes.

$150,000 is the last rung fully inside the Social Security base

Social Security stops being charged above $184,500 of wages. At $150,000 you are $34,500 short, so the whole salary carries the 6.2% — $9,300 a year — and there is no mid-year jump in your net pay. Above the base a paycheck grows partway through the year; below it, every paycheck is the same.

Moving up from $150,000, and how you got here

Getting here from $120,000 meant a $30,000 rise, of which $19,401 landed in your account — 64.7%. Leaving for $200,000 would mean another $50,000, and this time $33,236 a year reaches you, $2,770 a month, 66.5% of it. No point on either ladder pays you less for earning more: each rate applies only to the slice of income inside its own band.

What Iowa takes from a bonus at $150,000

Iowa withholds supplemental wages — a bonus, a commission, a payout — at a flat 3.8%, not at the rate the rest of your pay is charged. That is exactly the rate your salary is charged at this rung, so a bonus and a raise are withheld identically here. On $1,000 of bonus it is the difference between $38.00 and $38.00 of Iowa withholding. Withholding is not the tax: what you owe is settled on the return either way.

The childcare credit rate that $150,000 buys you

The Child and Dependent Care Credit refunds a share of what you spend on qualifying care, counting up to $3,000 of expenses for one dependent or $6,000 for two or more, and income decides what that share is. At $150,000 it is 20.0%: you are at the floor. The rate cannot fall below 20.0% however much more you earn, so unlike most things on this page, further raises cost you nothing here. It is a nonrefundable credit and none of the figures above include it: they model a filer with no dependents.

Iowa and the OBBBA tips and overtime deductions

The tips and overtime deductions described on this page are federal. On the state return Iowa treats them alike: it follows the federal tips and overtime deductions.

Iowa conforms (federal-taxable-income base); the deductions flow through to the state return.

$150,000 against Iowa's single rate

Iowa has no bracket ladder to climb. One rate, 3.8%, applies to every taxable dollar, so unlike the federal schedule above there is no band edge anywhere near $150,000 and no step for a raise to fall over: the first taxable dollar and the last are charged identically, and the $5,088 of Iowa income tax on this salary is simply 3.8% of $133,900.

Iowa subtracts $16,100 before that rate touches anything, which is 10.7% of a $150,000 salary. That is the only thing on the state side that changes as you climb this ladder: the subtraction is a fixed number of dollars, so it covers a smaller share of pay at every rung, and the effective Iowa rate here — 3.4% of gross — creeps toward the 3.8% headline without ever reaching it.

What the top of your federal bill is actually taxed at

$150,000 puts your next dollar two bands above the one most earners sit in. The gap between this band and the one below it is narrow, so unlike the step below, crossing into it barely changes what a raise is worth. You have $67,875 of taxable income left inside it, which is about $67,875 more salary before the next band starts taking a larger share of the extra.

What Iowa's minimum wage keeps, and what $150,000 keeps

The minimum wage in Iowa is $7.25 an hour, which is $15,080 a year at forty hours a week. $150,000 is 9.9 times that. Run the floor through the same engine and it keeps $13,926 of that $15,080 — 7.7% withheld — against 27.5% at $150,000. The gap between those two shares is the graduated system doing its work: the extra $134,920 of gross is charged at higher rates than the first $15,080 ever is.

Iowa has no state minimum wage above the federal floor, so the federal $7.25/hour applies in 2026.

Where Iowa ranks on $150,000

Run the same $150,000 through all fifty states and the District of Columbia and Iowa comes 16 from the top on take-home pay — 36 from the bottom — keeping $108,703. The jurisdictions immediately above it at this salary are Indiana and Pennsylvania; immediately below are Arkansas and Kentucky. Texas tops the table at $113,791, $5,088 more than Iowa on identical gross pay, and Oregon is last at $99,936. That ranking is specific to $150,000: flat-rate and graduated states change places as income rises, so Iowa's neighbours on this table are different at other salaries.

How this figure was computed

All of the figures on this page come out of the same open paycheck engine the Iowa calculator uses, run against the 2026 tax data file in this repository at build time — not typed in, not lifted from anyone else's table.

Gross

$150,000 a year, spread evenly: $72.12 an hour, $5,769.23 a fortnight.

Federal

2026 brackets on $133,900 taxable (gross less the $16,100 standard deduction), Rev. Proc. 2025-32 → $24,734.

FICA

Social Security $9,300 on all of $150,000, under the $184,500 base. Medicare $2,175.

Iowa

3.8% on $133,900 ($150,000 less the $16,100 Iowa subtracts first) → $5,088.

What this does not include

• What the figures do not touch. Pre-tax money of any kind — 401(k), HSA, FSA, health premiums — plus credits, dependants, itemising, non-wage income and the employer's own FICA share.
• What is specifically live at $150,000. None of the following is in the take-home figure above, and all of it is real at this income: the partially phased-out senior deduction (if you are 65 or over); the partially phased-out tips and overtime deductions; the Child and Dependent Care Credit, whose rate at this income is set by the §21 schedule described above.
• Iowa's small personal-exemption tax credits ($40 single / $80 MFJ / $40 per dependent) are post-tax credits and are not modeled.

A computed estimate, not tax advice. Your own W-4, benefits and credits move the number.