How a Washington, D.C. paycheck works
The District no longer publishes withholding tables at all. It stopped after the federal government suspended personal exemptions, on the reasoning that the tables could not be built without them. What the Office of Tax and Revenue points to instead is short: take the District's own rate schedule, and use the federal allowance amount for the allowances an employee claims. That is the whole method, and it is what this page follows.
Federal income tax withholding
Federal withholding annualises the wage, subtracts the standard deduction for the filing status on Form W-4 Step 1, applies the graduated schedule for that status, and deducts the dependent credit from Step 3. This page models a W-4 with Steps 2 and 4 blank: one job, no spouse income, no other income, no extra withholding.
Social Security and Medicare
Social Security takes a flat rate on wages up to an annual ceiling that moves each year. Medicare applies to every dollar, and above a fixed threshold the employer withholds the Additional Medicare tax on the excess.
Allowances and the rate schedule
Only two things enter the District calculation. The allowances you claim are multiplied by the federal allowance amount and taken off your wage, and what is left goes through the District's graduated schedule. The schedule has seven rates, and the top one applies only to seven-figure incomes, so most salaries sit in the middle bands where the rate climbs slowly.
Filing status does not appear anywhere. The District runs one schedule for single, married and head of household alike, which the last set of published tables confirmed by printing a single heading over every status. Two employees on the same wage claiming the same allowances are withheld the same amount, married or not.
What the allowance is worth, and why that is not settled
The guidance names the federal allowance amount without saying what it is, and there are two defensible readings. This page uses the amount the IRS still publishes for a single withholding allowance, because that is the only figure the federal government puts out under that name, and because a method that multiplied allowances by nothing would leave Form D-4 with no purpose.
The other reading is the federal personal exemption, which is what the District itself last used: the allowance in its final set of tables matched that year's federal personal exemption exactly. That exemption has been nil since, so under this reading nothing would be subtracted and the District tax would come out higher than shown here. The difference on an ordinary salary claiming one allowance is a few hundred dollars a year. Until the District publishes a figure or reissues Form D-4, treat the District line on this page as the more favourable of the two readings.
The certificate that sets your allowances
The number of allowances comes from Form D-4, the District's withholding allowance certificate. That form is currently marked as under review by the Office of Tax and Revenue and no new edition has been issued, so an employer is working from whatever certificate is already on file. This page assumes a single allowance, which is the ordinary case for one job and no dependants. If you are unsure what your employer holds for you, your payslip is the place to check.
Why withholding runs ahead of the bill
This is the part worth understanding about the District. Your annual return subtracts a standard deduction before the schedule applies. Withholding does not. It takes the allowances off and nothing else, so the wage that goes through the schedule in payroll is larger than the taxable income on your return, and the tax withheld across a year is correspondingly higher than the tax you finally owe.
The gap is not a rounding difference. It is roughly the tax on a whole standard deduction, and it comes back as a refund when you file.
Local income tax
None. The District is a single jurisdiction with no counties or municipalities of its own, so the District line is the whole of the state and local income tax on the payslip. The District taxes its residents rather than the people who work there, so someone who commutes in from another state has no District tax withheld at all once they file a certificate of non-residence with their employer.
What the employer pays on top
The employer matches Social Security and Medicare and pays federal unemployment tax at its net rate. Unemployment insurance is an employer contribution at an experience-rated percentage on a District wage base. The District's paid family leave programme is funded by an employer contribution set in statute as a percentage of covered wages, with no employee share, so it never reaches the employee side of a payslip.
What this calculator assumes
The figure models a salaried employee paid evenly across the year with a standard Form W-4 and no pre-tax deductions. It leaves out:
- Pre-tax contributions such as a 401(k), health premiums, HSA or flexible spending accounts.
- Extra withholding requested on the W-4, and the Step 2 and Step 4 adjustments.
- Bonuses and other supplemental wages.
- Employer-side unemployment insurance and the paid family leave contribution.
- Credits claimed on the District return, including the District earned income credit and the Schedule H property tax credit, which payroll knows nothing about.
Withholding versus your final tax bill
Withholding is a prepayment. The federal and District returns replace these assumptions with your real situation. For the District that difference is larger than in most states, because the standard deduction that payroll ignores reappears on the return, and District credits such as the earned income credit are settled there rather than in payroll. Filing is how you get the difference back.