How much tax is taken out of my paycheck in Colorado?

Colorado's own line is one rate on whatever is left of your taxable pay once the yearly amount for your W-4 filing status is set aside, spread evenly across your paychecks. Next to it sits your half of the FAMLI premium, charged on gross pay. Federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare make up the rest of what this page takes off.

Does Colorado have its own state W-4?

It has the DR 0004, and filling it in is optional. Without one the employer works from the federal W-4 alone, and an employee who hands in neither form is withheld as single. A new federal W-4 given to the employer without a fresh DR 0004 cancels the old Colorado certificate, so the amounts on it stop counting. This calculator follows the federal-only path.

Why might my Colorado withholding differ from this calculator?

The likeliest reason is a DR 0004 on file. Its line 2 takes the place of the amount set aside for your filing status, and a zero there sets nothing aside, which raises the tax; its line 3 asks for a fixed extra sum each paycheck. Neither is an input here yet. A city occupational privilege tax, such as Denver's, is left out too, and so is any FAMLI share your employer has chosen to pay for you.

Is FAMLI taken out of my paycheck in Colorado?

In most jobs, yes. The premium is split between employer and employee, and the employee's half comes out of gross pay, tips and overtime included, until the year's wages reach the Social Security wage cap. It is taken after tax, so it does not lower the income tax line. An employer may cover the whole premium instead, and some local governments have opted out of the program; in either case the stub carries no FAMLI deduction.

Why is the Colorado figure marked as not verified?

Because a figure is called verified here only once it reproduces a calculation the state has published itself, and Colorado's withholding worksheet comes without a worked example. The steps it prescribes are the ones this page follows; the spreadsheet edition the department offers has not yet been held against it. Until that happens, the page says so instead of implying a check nobody has made.

Colorado paycheck calculator

Colorado charges a single flat rate on wages and has no allowances to count. Before the rate is applied, the employer sets aside a fixed yearly amount, larger for a married couple filing jointly than for anyone else, and reads the filing status for it straight off the federal W-4. An employee may also hand in Colorado's own certificate, the DR 0004, which swaps that amount for one worked out on the form's worksheet.

The Colorado figures below have not been reproduced against a calculation Colorado publishes itself. Read the note under the tables before relying on the state line.

Take-home pay

$1,603.36

per bi-weekly (26 per year) period

Gross pay: $2,000.00
Federal Income Tax: −$156.15
Social Security: −$124.00
Medicare: −$29.00
CO State Income Tax: −$78.69
Colorado FAMLI: −$8.80
Net pay: $1,603.36

Carries these figures into a full Colorado pay stub you can preview and download.

How Colorado withholding is worked out

The method is the state's DR 1098 worksheet: the period's taxable pay is scaled up to a year, the amount for the W-4 filing status comes off, the rate is charged on the rest, and the result is divided back over the year's paychecks. Taxable pay means wages subject to federal withholding, so pre-tax 401(k) and cafeteria plan deductions are already out of it. Two lines of the DR 0004 are not modelled here. Where an employee has filed one, its line 2 replaces the amount taken from the W-4 status, and the employer must use it even when it is zero, while its line 3 adds a fixed extra sum to every paycheck. This calculator asks for neither, so for such an employee the Colorado line here can be too low or too high. Colorado publishes no worked example, and the spreadsheet version of its worksheet has not yet been compared with this page, so these figures are not verified against a calculation of the state's own. Beside the income tax, FAMLI, the state's paid family and medical leave insurance, takes the employee's half of its premium out of gross pay after tax. The figure here takes that half off; an employer that pays the whole premium leaves no FAMLI line on the real stub, and the take-home there is higher by that much.

These are withholding figures: what an employer takes out of one paycheck, which is not the same calculation as the one on an annual return.

Colorado charges the same rates whatever the filing status, but the status still changes the amounts given below the table. Wages are annualised first, so the figures below are annual.

Every filing status
Annual wages	Tax on the lower figure	Rate on the rest
$0.00 and up	$0.00	4.4%

Annual standard deduction

Single: $5,500.00

Married filing jointly: $11,000.00

Head of household: $5,500.00

State tax only. Denver and a few other Colorado cities charge a flat monthly occupational privilege tax, withheld from the pay on top of this.

DR 1098 (10/21/25) states the four steps and nothing else: the department publishes no worked example, no wage bracket table, and the electronic version it calls the DR 1098 Withholding Calculator is that same worksheet in a spreadsheet, with the allowance typed in by hand rather than computed. With nothing of Colorado's own to check a computation against, the entry stays unverified.

Withheld beside the income tax

Colorado FAMLI — 0.44%: Colorado's paid family and medical leave insurance. The employee pays half the premium, unless the employer has chosen to cover that half as well. Withheld until wages for the year reach $184,500.00.

Colorado sources

Frequently asked questions

What Colorado law asks of a pay stub

Whether a stub is required, how it may be delivered, and the minimum wage and pay frequency rules.

Colorado pay stub requirements