Travel Nurse Take-Home Pay Calculator

How travel nurse pay actually works

A travel contract is not one number. It is a package: a modest taxable hourly rate, plus weekly stipends for housing and for meals and incidentals. Recruiters quote the two added together as a "blended rate", which is why a $2,400-a-week contract and a $2,400-a-week staff job are not remotely the same offer. Only the taxable portion is subject to income tax and FICA. The stipend portion, if you qualify for it, arrives whole.

That split is the single biggest driver of what you actually keep, and it is why two contracts with identical gross pay can differ by several hundred dollars a week in net. A package weighted towards stipends nets more. It also lowers the wages reported on your W-2, which matters for mortgage applications, Social Security credits and disability calculations — a genuine trade-off, not a free win.

The tax home rule, which is where people get hurt

Stipends are only non-taxable if you maintain a tax home and incur duplicated living expenses while on assignment. A tax home is not simply "where your driver's licence says". The IRS looks for real, ongoing costs at a permanent residence you return to — rent or mortgage you keep paying while you are away, not a parent's spare room you stay in between contracts.

If you cannot show that, every dollar of stipend is reclassified as taxable wages, retroactively. The 12-month rule bites too: work the same metropolitan area for more than twelve months in any twenty-four and that area becomes your tax home, so the stipends stop qualifying from then on. This is how a traveller ends up with a five-figure surprise bill. Untick the tax-home box in the calculator above to see what your package looks like if that happens — for most people it is a materially different number.

Why this figure differs from your paycheck

This calculator computes your annual tax liability — what you actually owe for the year — and divides it back out to a weekly figure. Your employer does something different: they withhold according to the W-4 you filled in, using tables that assume you earn at that rate for all 52 weeks. Travellers rarely do. The result is that withholding usually runs ahead of liability during a contract, and the difference comes back as a refund when you file. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions. This page answers "what does this contract really pay me", which is the one you need when comparing offers.

That is also why the "weeks worked per year" input matters more than it looks. Tax brackets are annual. Work 48 weeks instead of 52 and your annual income is lower, so a smaller slice of it reaches the higher brackets, and your weekly net goes up. Calculators that quietly assume 52 weeks overstate your tax.

State tax, and the states that charge you anyway

Nine states levy no income tax on wages: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. That is the headline reason contracts in Texas and Florida net well relative to their gross. But "no income tax" does not mean "nothing withheld". Washington charges the WA Cares long-term-care premium and a paid-leave contribution. California levies State Disability Insurance on every dollar of wages with no cap at all, which is a real deduction most calculators simply omit. Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and several others run employee-funded paid-leave programmes. Those lines are itemised separately in the breakdown above rather than folded into "state tax", because they are the ones that surprise people.

What to check before signing

Ask what the taxable rate is, separately from the stipends — a recruiter who will only quote a blended number is worth pressing. Ask whether the stipends are paid when you miss a shift, because many contracts prorate them and a single cancelled shift can cost more than the hourly loss suggests. Check the guaranteed hours clause. And confirm the assignment location for tax purposes, which is not always the same as the facility's mailing address.