Paychecks & Taxes
Your Paycheck, Annotated
A line-by-line walkthrough of a real sample pay stub — gross pay, FICA, federal and state withholding, pre-tax deductions, and why your net pay is smaller than you expected.
Social Security COLA calculator
Every year Social Security raises benefits by a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. What reaches your bank account also depends on the Medicare Part B premium, which is usually taken out of the payment first. Enter your current benefit, and this calculator applies a COLA with Social Security's rounding rules to estimate your new monthly deposit.
How the math works
- New benefit before Medicare = your current benefit × (1 + the COLA), rounded down to the next lower dime. Social Security applies the COLA to your primary insurance amount, the unrounded figure behind your benefit, so the official amount can differ from this estimate by a dollar or two.
- Monthly deposit = that benefit minus the Medicare Part B premium, when it is deducted from your payment, rounded down to the whole dollar. The change in your deposit compares this year's deposit with next year's, each worked out the same way.
- The COLA starts at 2.8%, the increase that applied to benefits payable from January 2026. The 2027 COLA is expected on October 14, 2026, the day the Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to publish September's consumer price index; Social Security customarily announces the COLA the same day. Enter the new percentage once it is out.
- Both Part B fields start at $202.90, the standard 2026 premium. CMS sets next year's premium later in the year; until then, try a higher figure to see how much of the raise it would absorb. Higher-income beneficiaries pay an income-related amount on top of the standard premium, so use the figure on your own notice.
- The hold-harmless rule is not applied. For many people who already have the premium deducted, that rule caps a Part B increase at the dollar amount of their COLA, so if a test here shows a smaller deposit, the real one may simply stay flat.
An estimate to show how the numbers fit together — not financial, tax, or legal advice. The official figure is the one on the notice Social Security sends you. See the disclaimer.
