Nanny Gross-Up Calculator: Take-Home Pay to True Employer Cost
General information, not advice: this page covers tax and employment topics in general terms. It is not tax or legal advice, and reading it does not create a CPA–client relationship. Tax and labor rules vary by state and situation — consult a qualified professional for your circumstances.
Job offers are usually quoted in gross wages. But plenty of families negotiate the other direction: “I’ll pay you $1,000 a week take-home.” The gap between take-home and employer cost is bigger than most people guess, because grossing up for taxes compounds — and because of an IRS subtlety most calculators miss.
The subtlety (IRS Topic 756): if you pay your nanny’s employee share of FICA yourself instead of withholding it, the amount you pay counts as taxable wages for income tax purposes (though not for FICA or FUTA). That changes the gross-up math. This calculator handles both cases — toggle it below and watch the numbers move.
Step 1 — What you want the nanny to take home
Step 2 — Tax assumptions (2026 figures)
Fixed 2026 figures used: employee/employer FICA 7.65% each; FUTA 0.6% on first $7,000; payroll service $588/yr (Poppins $49/mo, published price). SUTA is applied to the first $7,000 of wages as an illustration — your state's wage base is usually higher, so treat SUTA here as a floor estimate.
How to read the result
- Required gross is what goes on the offer letter and the W-2. It’s always higher than take-home — that’s the gross-up.
- Effective markup over take-home is the number to budget against: it answers “for every $1 my nanny takes home, what do I spend?”
- Try the toggle. Counter-intuitively, paying the employee’s FICA share yourself is usually slightly cheaper for you than grossing wages up by the equivalent amount — because the income-tax gross-up base is smaller. The calculator shows why.
Related: the true cost of a nanny in 2026 (the same model from the wage side) · household employer tax guide (Schedule H, W-2s, and the DIY path).