Prorated Salary Calculator

Take the full pay for the period and multiply it by the fraction of the period you were employed. On a $65,000 salary paid twice a month, a full period is $2,708.33. Work 9 of the 15 calendar days and the calendar method pays $1,625.00; work 7 of the 11 working days and the working-day method pays $1,723.48. Both are legitimate, and they do not agree — which is why the method has to come from your contract.

Whichever your employer's policy or your contract specifies. The calendar method divides by every day in the period, so weekends dilute the daily rate and a start on a Monday after a weekend pays slightly less. The working-day method divides only by the days you were expected to work, which usually favours someone starting mid-week. Neither is more correct in the abstract; what matters is that the employer applies one consistently. If nothing is written down, ask which they use before disputing a figure.

Any period you were not employed or not paid for the whole of it: starting a job mid-period, leaving mid-period, moving from part-time to full-time, unpaid leave, or a salary change that takes effect partway through. It also appears when a company switches pay frequency, where one transitional period is short by design.

Because payroll calculates withholding as though the current period's pace continued all year. A short check looks like a lower annual salary to the withholding tables, so proportionally less federal income tax comes out. It evens up over the year and settles on your return. FICA is unaffected — Social Security and Medicare are flat percentages of whatever you were actually paid.

For a genuine partial period of employment, yes — an exempt employee's salary can be prorated for the first and last week of employment. What an employer generally cannot do is dock an exempt employee's salary for partial-day absences or for days the business chose to close, since that puts the exemption itself at risk.

Usually by months of service in the bonus year rather than by days: six months of a twelve-month year gives half. The rules vary far more than salary proration does, and whether you qualify at all when leaving before the payment date is a contract question. Whatever the amount, it is withheld as supplemental wages at the flat federal rate.