Overtime Calculator

Hours past 40 in the workweek pay at 1.5× your regular rate: at $20/hour, overtime hours pay $30, so a 48-hour week grosses 40×$20 + 8×$30 = $1,040. Note the base is your 'regular rate,' which legally includes non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials — if you earn those, your true OT rate is slightly higher than wage×1.5, and employers computing it on bare wage alone are underpaying, a genuinely common violation.

No — that's the most expensive misconception in employment. Overtime exemption requires passing both a salary-level test and a duties test (executive, administrative, professional, and similar categories). A salaried employee below the threshold, or whose actual duties don't fit the exemption, is owed overtime regardless of what the offer letter implies. Job titles don't decide it; duties do. If you're salaried, regularly over 40, and your work is routine rather than managerial, it's worth looking up your state's rules.

No — this myth needs the full debunk because it makes people turn down money. Overtime dollars are taxed identically to regular dollars at your marginal rates. What creates the illusion: withholding tables annualize each check, so a big OT week is withheld as if you earn that much every week — over-withholding that comes back at refund time. Your actual tax on OT income is just your marginal rate, and a raise or big week can never reduce your take-home.

California is the big one: 1.5× past 8 hours in a single day, 2× past 12, plus rules for seventh consecutive workdays — so a Californian can work exactly 40 hours and still be owed overtime if one day ran long. Alaska, Nevada, and Colorado have daily thresholds too (details vary). Everywhere else follows the federal weekly-40 standard. This calculator does the federal weekly math; in a daily-OT state, tally the daily premiums separately.