AGI Calculator
Result
Adjusted gross income
- Total adjustments
- 7,000.00
- Total income
- 90,000.00
- Adjustments, share of income
- 7.78%
Adjusted gross income is the halfway figure in an American tax return: it is what is left of your gross income after a specific list of deductions has come off, and it is the number a surprising amount of the tax code is written around. This AGI calculator does that one subtraction and stops there. Enter your total income and the deductions that belong above the line, and it gives you the AGI that the later provisions measure you by. The list of deductions is closed and it is set out in the statute rather than left to judgement, which is what makes the line worth drawing. What is not on the list matters as much as what is: the standard deduction is not on it, and neither is any of the itemised deductions. Those come off after AGI has been worked out, which means a taxpayer who puts the standard deduction into the adjustments fields here will get an AGI that is too low and will have no reason to suspect it. The test is not what the payment was for but where it sits in the return. A retirement contribution and a mortgage interest payment are both tax deductions, and only one of them is above the line. 90,000 of income with 5,000 of retirement contributions and 2,000 of student loan interest gives an AGI of 83,000, and the panel also prints what share of your income went to the adjustments at all. The table below lists the categories that belong above the line and, in the last column, what limits each one — because the line decides which deductions count, and the limits decide how much of each one counts.
What belongs above the line, and what limits each one
| Adjustment | Statutory basis | What limits it |
|---|---|---|
| Educator expenses | §62(a)(2)(D) | Capped by the statute, and only available to an eligible educator — someone who teaches in a school for at least the required number of hours during the year. The point of putting it above the line is that it survives taking the standard deduction, which matters because teachers who spend their own money on a classroom are unlikely to be itemising. |
| Health savings account | §62(a)(19), §223 | Limited by the annual contribution ceiling, which moves with inflation, and available only with a qualifying high-deductible health plan. It is the most valuable adjustment on the list for those who qualify, because the money goes in untaxed, comes out untaxed when it pays medical costs, and the deduction does not require itemising. |
| Retirement contributions | §62(a)(6), §62(a)(7) | Limited by the contribution ceiling and reduced once income passes a threshold, and for a taxpayer covered by an employer plan the deduction may disappear entirely. The threshold is tested against a version of adjusted gross income that is worked out without regard to the deduction itself, which is one of the places this figure and the modified version of it part company. |
| Student loan interest | §62(a)(17), §221 | Capped at $2,500 by the statute and reduced as income rises above a threshold that differs for a joint return. It is the clearest case on the list of a deduction with both a ceiling and a phase-out, and both of them are tested against a modified version of adjusted gross income rather than against the figure itself. |
| Other adjustments | the rest of §62(a) | The remaining paragraphs, each narrow and each with its own conditions: moving expenses for a member of the armed forces on active duty, jury pay remitted to an employer, reforestation costs, repayment of supplemental unemployment benefits, and attorney fees in certain discrimination and whistleblower actions. None of them is a general deduction, and that is the principle the whole list is built on. |
Read the last column first, because it is the one that answers a question the fields above cannot: every item on this list has a ceiling, a phase-out or an eligibility condition attached, and none of them is enforced by the arithmetic. This page will subtract whatever you type. The middle column is there so that the basis of each item is visible at a glance: these are paragraphs of a statute rather than a policy, and the list is short for a reason — a deduction available to everyone would not need to be above the line, because it could be handled by the standard deduction instead. Notice what the categories have in common. Retirement savings, health savings accounts and student loan interest are all money that has either been put aside for a future purpose or spent on one, and the teacher's classroom expenses are the same idea at a smaller scale. Two warnings about the figures. The statutory basis column is a citation, not an amount: the ceilings move with inflation and the phase-out thresholds are adjusted most years, so the current numbers have to be looked up for the year you are filing rather than taken from any table. And one item on this list appears in the middle column with a figure written into the section itself, which is the exception rather than the rule.
Formula
Adjusted gross income = total income − the deductions allowed by 26 U.S.C. §62(a)
- totalIncome
- Everything that counts as gross income before any deduction: wages, salaries, tips, self-employment profit, interest, dividends, rents, capital gains, pensions and the rest. It is a single figure here rather than a breakdown because the breakdown does not change the arithmetic — every source is added up before the first deduction comes off, which is exactly why the annual income tools are on the page before this one.
- educatorExpenses
- Money an eligible teacher or other educator spent out of pocket on books, supplies, computer equipment and similar classroom materials. It is an adjustment rather than an itemised deduction, so a teacher who takes the standard deduction can still take it — which is the whole reason the above-the-line list exists. The statute puts a ceiling on it, so do not treat the field as unlimited.
- hsaContribution
- A contribution to a health savings account, if you have a qualifying high-deductible health plan. The deduction is allowed without itemising, and the account is not taxed when it pays out for medical costs, which makes this the most valuable of the adjustments for the people who are eligible for it. The amount you may put in is limited, and the limit changes with inflation.
- retirementContributions
- Contributions to a retirement plan that the statute lets you deduct on the way in: a traditional individual retirement account, and for someone self-employed a simplified employee pension or a similar plan. Whether the deduction is available at all, and how much of it, depends on whether you are covered by an employer plan and on your income, so this field takes the figure you have already worked out rather than working it out for you.
- studentLoanInterest
- Interest paid on a qualified student loan during the year. It is the one adjustment on this page with a figure written into the statute itself, and it is also reduced as income rises, so it is the clearest example of why the line between above and below matters and why a phase-out can bite before you expect it to.
- otherAdjustments
- The rest of the list. It is a single field because the remaining paragraphs are narrow: moving expenses for a member of the armed forces, jury pay handed over to an employer, reforestation costs, a penalty for taking money out of a savings account early, and a few more. None of them is common, and none of them is a general deduction, which is the point of the line — a deduction that anyone can take is by definition below it.
- adjustedGrossIncome
- The result, and the figure the rest of the return is measured against. Its uses are the reason this page exists: the ceiling on a retirement contribution, the phase-out of the student loan interest deduction, eligibility for a health insurance premium credit and a long list of others are all tested against it rather than against your income or your taxable income. It is also the line a state tax return usually starts from.
- totalAdjustments
- The five fields added up. Printed separately because it is the only figure on the panel that is entirely within your control at filing time, and because seeing it as one number is the quickest way to notice a field that has been filled in wrongly — a standard deduction entered here shows up as an adjustment total far larger than any of the individual fields would suggest.
- adjustmentsShare
- The adjustments as a share of total income. Descriptive rather than a grade: it says how much of the income the above-the-line list reached, and it is the row that makes the difference between this page and a taxable income tool visible in one number. It can exceed 100% or go negative, and neither is an error — a business loss large enough to wipe out the year's other income produces exactly that.
Use it when a form, a phase-out or another calculator asks for adjusted gross income and you have your income and your deductions to hand. It is the right tool for the question of whether a retirement contribution is deductible at all, because that is tested against this figure; for working out whether income is low enough for the student loan interest deduction to survive; and for the state return that starts from it. It is the wrong tool for working out what you will actually pay, because the standard deduction and the tax brackets sit below this line and this page deliberately does not cross it. If a tax deduction you are thinking of is a mortgage interest payment, a charitable gift, a state tax payment or a medical expense, it is not here — those are itemised deductions, they come off a different line, and they have no effect on the number this page produces.
Worked examples
The default: 90,000 with two adjustments
- Adjustments: 5,000 + 2,000 = 7,000
- Adjusted gross income: 90,000 − 7,000 = 83,000
- Adjustments as a share of income: 7,000 ÷ 90,000 × 100 = 7.78%
The ordinary shape of the calculation, and the one where the third row is most misleading if you are not careful: the 7.78% is the share of income the above-the-line list reached, not a rate of tax, and nothing on this page has touched tax yet. Several provisions are tested against the 83,000, and none of them is tested against the 90,000.
All five adjustment fields in use: 60,000
- Adjustments: 500 + 4,000 + 6,000 + 2,500 + 1,000 = 14,000
- Adjusted gross income: 60,000 − 14,000 = 46,000
- Adjustments as a share of income: 14,000 ÷ 60,000 × 100 = 23.33%
A taxpayer with a health savings account, a retirement plan and a student loan can take a quarter of their income off above the line, and every one of those five figures survives the standard deduction being taken instead of itemising. Nothing about filing status entered this calculation, which is the point: single, married filing jointly and head of household all produce this same 46,000, because status changes the standard deduction and the brackets below the line rather than the line itself.
No adjustments at all: 45,000
- Adjustments: 0
- Adjusted gross income: 45,000 − 0 = 45,000
- Adjustments as a share of income: 0 ÷ 45,000 × 100 = 0%
For a wage earner with no student loan, no health savings account and no retirement plan of their own, adjusted gross income and total income are the same number. That is a normal answer and not a sign that the page failed — the above-the-line list is short, and most of what people think of as tax deductions is not on it. Note too that the last row is 0 rather than blank, so the panel still shows that the question was asked.
Income wiped out: a 1,000 loss against no income
- Adjustments: 1,000
- Adjusted gross income: 0 − 1,000 = −1,000
- Adjustments as a share of income: 0 (income is zero, so no share is defined)
A negative adjusted gross income is a real result rather than a broken one, and this page does not block it. A business loss can exceed the year's other income, and the loss is an above-the-line deduction like any other, so a year with more deductions than income produces a negative figure that carries into the next year's return. The last row is 0 because there is no income to take a share of; a share of nothing is not a number, and printing a blank there would suggest the page had not tried.
Limitations
This is the United States federal definition and nothing else. It does not know your filing status, and that is not an omission to be patched — status changes the standard deduction and the tax brackets, both of which sit below this line, so including a field for it here would suggest an effect on a figure it cannot touch. It does not decide whether any particular deduction is available to you: the educator expense deduction needs you to be an eligible educator, the health savings account deduction needs a qualifying high-deductible plan, and the retirement contribution deduction turns on whether you are covered by an employer plan and on your income. It also does not enforce the ceilings. Several of the deductions above the line are capped, one of them at a figure written into the statute and the others at figures that move with inflation, and this page will happily subtract an amount larger than any of them allows — because a calculator that silently trimmed your entry to a limit it half-remembered would be worse than one that takes you at your word. The figures in the table are cited rather than applied, and the current ones should be checked against the authority for the year you are filing. Beyond that, the page models nothing on the far side of the line: no standard deduction, no itemised deductions, no personal exemptions, no tax brackets, no credits, no alternative minimum tax, no self-employment tax, no state rules of any kind, and no treatment of the many provisions that are tested against a modified version of this figure rather than against the figure itself. That last point is the one to carry away. Adjusted gross income is a waypoint, and a number of provisions use a version of it that adds items back — the page next to this one does exactly that, and if you are looking up a threshold for a retirement account, a student loan or a health insurance premium credit, that is the figure you need rather than this one.
Frequently asked questions
- Is adjusted gross income the same as taxable income?
- No. Adjusted gross income is total income minus the above-the-line deductions; taxable income is that figure minus the standard deduction or your itemised deductions. The two are separated by exactly that step, and it is the step most people skip. For a single filer taking the standard deduction the taxable income ends up far below the adjusted gross income, which is why a bracket that looks like it should not apply very often does not.
- Does the standard deduction go in the adjustments fields?
- It does not, and putting it there is the most common way to get a wrong answer from this page. The standard deduction comes off after adjusted gross income has been worked out, not before it, so subtracting it here gives a figure that is too low. If you have entered it, the adjustment total will be much larger than any single adjustment should be, and that is the symptom to look for.
- Which tax deductions count as above-the-line?
- The statute sets out a closed list: trade and business deductions, certain expenses of employees and of performing artists, losses from the sale of property, deductions for rents and royalties, retirement savings, a penalty for an early withdrawal from a savings account, reforestation costs, moving expenses for members of the armed forces, health savings accounts, interest on education loans, jury pay handed to an employer, and attorney fees in certain discrimination and whistleblower cases. Everything else a taxpayer thinks of as a deduction is below the line.
- Can adjusted gross income be negative?
- Yes. A business loss large enough to exceed the year's other income produces a negative figure, and the loss is an above-the-line deduction in the same way the others are. This page does not block that result, and the last row shows a share of zero rather than a number because there is no income to take a share of. A negative figure carries forward in ways the rest of the return deals with.
- Why is this figure used instead of my income?
- Because it is a measure of capacity rather than of earnings. A retirement contribution deduction, the student loan interest deduction and eligibility for a health insurance premium credit are all tested against adjusted gross income, on the principle that two households with the same earnings are not in the same position if one of them has already committed income to a retirement account. Some provisions go further and add items back to this figure before testing it.
- Do my filing status or dependants change this number?
- No, and this page has no fields for them on purpose. Filing status changes the standard deduction and the width of the tax brackets, and dependants change credits; all of those operate below the line this page draws. Single, married filing jointly and head of household produce the same adjusted gross income from the same income and the same above-the-line deductions. Where status does matter for this figure is in the phase-out thresholds that later provisions apply to it rather than in the figure itself.
References
- 26 U.S.C. §62 — adjusted gross income defined: the definition itself, and the closed list of deductions allowed in arriving at it, from trade and business deductions through retirement savings, moving expenses, health savings accounts and interest on education loans — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School (United States)
- Definition of adjusted gross income — the filing-season statement of what the figure is and what it is used for, including the notice that it is not the same as taxable income — Internal Revenue Service (United States)
- 26 U.S.C. §221 — interest on education loans: the deduction of up to $2,500 in the statute, and the reduction of that amount as modified adjusted gross income rises, which is the clearest example of an above-the-line deduction with a phase-out — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School (United States)
- 26 U.S.C. §219(g)(3)(A) — how adjusted gross income is to be determined for the retirement contribution phase-out: after some sections, without regard to others, and without regard to the deduction itself — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School (United States)