Is a bonus taxed at a higher rate than salary?
No. A bonus is ordinary income. It goes on the same return as your salary, fills the same brackets in the same order, and is settled by the same calculation at the end of the year.
What changes is the withholding. The IRS calls a bonus a supplemental wage, along with commissions, overtime, severance, back pay, awards and prizes, and it allows an employer two ways of withholding from one. Neither is built to match the tax you will actually owe.
What is the 22% bonus withholding rate?
It is the flat rate an employer may withhold from supplemental wages paid separately from regular pay. For 2026 it is 22% on supplemental wages up to $1,000,000 in a calendar year, and no other percentage is allowed.
Past that cumulative $1,000,000 the excess is withheld at 37%, without regard to the Form W-4 you filed. Payments from businesses under common control count towards the same million.
The flat rate is available only if income tax was withheld from your regular wages in the current or the previous calendar year. Where it was not, the aggregate method is the only one your employer may use.
What is the aggregate method?
It adds the bonus to the regular wages paid alongside it, works out the withholding on the combined amount as though you were paid that much every period, then subtracts what was already withheld from the regular wages. What is left comes out of the bonus.
The middle step is the one that catches people. A $2,000 monthly salary paid with a $1,000 bonus is treated for that moment like a $3,000 month, and the withholding tables answer as if every month looked like that. On a large bonus the method can hold back far more than the year will ask for.
If the bonus is paid inside your regular wages and the two are not stated separately, your employer withholds as though the total were one ordinary payment. That is a third answer again, and none of the three is your tax.
Why does so much come out of a bonus paycheck?
Because withholding is a prepayment, not the bill. Whichever method your employer uses, it is estimating a year it cannot see, and on a one-off payment the estimate is usually high.
Social Security and Medicare come out as well, at the ordinary rates. There is no special rate for a bonus: 6.2% for Social Security until your wages for the year reach $184,500, and 1.45% for Medicare with no ceiling at all. Past $200,000 of wages in the year your employer adds a further 0.9% for Medicare, whatever your filing status.
State withholding follows its own rules for supplemental pay, and those differ by state. What each one levies is set out on each state's page.
Does it even out when you file?
Yes. Your return works out the tax on your total income for the year, and everything withheld from every paycheck counts against that figure. Withhold too much and the difference comes back as a refund; withhold too little and you pay the balance.
So a flat 22% is close to right only if 22% is roughly the rate that money ends up paying. Below that, the bonus was over-withheld and part of it returns. Above it, the bonus was under-withheld and the return asks for the rest.
What should you check after a bonus?
What the year looks like with the bonus in it. Add it to your salary and run the total through the take-home pay calculator: what it shows is the annual tax on that income, which is the figure your return settles against rather than the one your bonus paycheck withheld.
If a large bonus has moved you up a bracket, it is also the moment to look at the rest of your withholding. The W-4 guide covers which step of the form changes what.