Frequently asked questions

Take-home pay is what actually reaches your account: your monthly gross minus the employee share of the four insurances (National Pension, health, long-term care and employment) and minus income tax plus local income tax. Gross and annual figures tell you little on their own — take-home is the number to plan living costs against. Enter a monthly gross in the calculator and it itemizes every deduction and shows the take-home instantly.

Every month your employer withholds income tax using the National Tax Service’s simplified table (간이세액표), a lookup by monthly pay and number of dependants. Once a year, the year-end settlement (연말정산) computes your real annual tax from your full income and deductions, and the two are reconciled — you get a refund or pay the difference. This calculator shows the settlement tax ÷ 12, so it can differ slightly from 간이세액표-based tools that show the monthly withholding instead.

On the remuneration base (gross minus the non-taxable portion), the employee pays National Pension at 4.75%, health insurance at 3.595%, and employment insurance at 0.9%. National Pension is charged on a standard monthly income held between a floor (₩410,000) and a ceiling (₩6,590,000) for the current period, so pay above the ceiling adds nothing more. Industrial-accident insurance is paid entirely by the employer and is not deducted from your pay.

This is the one people get wrong. Long-term care insurance is not a percentage of your wage — it is 13.14% of your health-insurance premium. So the base is the health premium you already owe, not your salary. The calculator works out the health premium first, then takes long-term care from that.

Yes, in two ways. The basic personal deduction removes ₩1,500,000 a year from your income for each qualifying person, including yourself — lowering the taxable base. And for children aged 8 and over, the child tax credit comes off the tax directly: ₩250,000 for one child and ₩550,000 for two, with more for each additional child. Change the dependants or children inputs and the calculator reacts at once.

Korea has a single statutory minimum wage that applies to every sector and workplace size. The current rate is ₩10,320 an hour, which works out to about ₩2,156,880 a month at the standard 209-hour basis. Remember it is a gross figure — the four insurances and income tax still come off it.

Every rate and amount is transcribed from a named primary source and is the one in force for 2026. Two things limit them: a very recent change may not have reached these pages yet, and none has been through this site's own review and sign-off; no model declares a rate correct on its own. The result is an estimate rather than the actual withholding, because the calculator cannot know your circumstances — for the amount that binds you, check with your employer or the National Tax Service.