Nurse Take-Home Pay in Texas (2026)

Why Texas Nurses Keep More

A registered nurse in Texas is taxed only by the federal government: federal income tax plus FICA (6.2% Social Security up to the 2026 wage base and 1.45% Medicare, with a 0.9% Medicare surtax above $200,000). There is no Texas income tax and, unlike Pennsylvania or Ohio, no local wage tax on the nurse's paycheck. That single fact is why a Texas nurse at $85,000 takes home roughly the same as a nurse earning $95,000+ in a state with a 5–10% income tax.

Base Pay After Tax

Texas nurses rarely earn a flat salary — most are hourly, and total pay swings with overtime. For a single filer with the 2026 standard deduction, here is take-home on common RN incomes (federal income tax + FICA only, state = $0):

Figures are for a single filer with the 2026 federal standard deduction and no credits. A married nurse filing jointly would keep more at the same gross, because the federal brackets are wider.

How Overtime and Shift Differentials Are Taxed

Overtime and shift differentials are still ordinary wages. They are taxed at the same federal and FICA rates as your base — there is no special "overtime tax rate." The common myth that overtime is "taxed at 40%" comes from bracket confusion: a few extra dollars of overtime can push part of your income into a higher federal bracket, but only that slice is taxed higher, and in Texas there is no state bracket stacking on top.

A practical example: a nurse at $85,000 who picks up enough overtime to reach $110,000 keeps about $17,600 of the extra $25,000 — losing roughly $7,400 to federal and FICA. Because Texas takes nothing at the state level, that nurse keeps far more per overtime hour than a colleague in California or New York would.

Travel Nurses and Stipends

Travel contracts split pay into a taxable hourly wage and a non-taxable stipend for housing and meals. The stipend is excluded from federal income and FICA only if you maintain a tax home and the stipend does not exceed reasonable living costs — the "duplicated expense" rule. Get this wrong and the IRS can reclassify the stipend as wages. Texas makes the math cleaner: with no state tax, there is no state-level recapture even when a stipend is questioned, but the federal rules still apply exactly as they would in any state.

For a travel nurse, the after-tax advantage of Texas is twofold: the taxable wage portion is untouched by state tax, and if you are a Texas resident, your stipends are never subject to a second state's income tax the way a traveling nurse from California or New York often is.

Frequently Asked Questions