Hourly Burden Rate Calculator

How It Works

1. Enter Base Wage or Salary

   Enter the employee's hourly wage or annual salary. Salary mode converts the annual salary to an hourly planning basis using the entered weekly hours.

2. Review Payroll Tax Assumptions

   Review Social Security, Medicare, FUTA, and SUTA rates and wage bases. The federal defaults are source pointers, while state unemployment, taxable wages, deposits, and forms require payroll review.

3. Enter Workers Comp From Your Records

   Enter the workers compensation value from your policy, state bureau, insurer quote, or payroll audit basis. The built-in trade presets are only quick what-if placeholders.

4. Enter Benefits and Insurance

   Input employer benefit costs, retirement match, general liability, vehicle/tool allowance, training, and overhead allocation from your current records.

5. Enter Time Off and Utilization

   Enter PTO, holidays, sick days, and a local utilization percentage. The calculator converts paid time into productive-hour planning rows without determining FLSA compensable time or overtime.

Built For

• Contractors screening how pay, benefits, payroll taxes, workers comp, overhead, and utilization affect one labor-cost row
• Shop owners replacing default assumptions with payroll, insurance, and benefit records before estimating work
• Estimators comparing local utilization assumptions before deciding whether a labor-rate review is needed
• Managers preparing source-gap notes for payroll, accounting, insurance, HR, or estimating review
• Small businesses testing the cost effect of hiring assumptions without treating the result as legal or payroll advice
• Construction teams documenting what remains to be verified before using a labor-cost row in a bid model

Features & Capabilities

Editable Federal and State Tax Boundaries

Separates Social Security, Medicare, FUTA, and SUTA assumptions so the federal wage bases and the state placeholders stay visible.

Productive-Hour Planning

Converts entered paid hours, PTO, holidays, sick time, and utilization into an annual productive-hour planning row.

Workers Comp Source Warnings

Trade presets are labeled as placeholders and the calculator points users back to class codes, state rules, insurer quotes, payroll basis, and EMR review.

Annual Cost Allocation

Breaks modeled cost into base pay, benefits, payroll taxes, insurance, and other allocation rows from the entered assumptions.

Rate Screen Rows

Shows arithmetic margin rows from the modeled burden rate while warning that market pricing and bid approval are outside the app.

PDF and CSV Export

Exports the calculator with assumptions, warnings, and source pointers for review with payroll, accounting, insurance, or estimating advisors.

Assumptions

• Employer Social Security and Medicare are modeled separately; Social Security uses the entered wage base and Medicare has no wage-base cap.
• FUTA uses an entered after-credit rate and wage base; state unemployment uses separate SUTA rate and wage-base placeholders.
• Paid time off reduces modeled available hours but does not determine FLSA compensable time or overtime.
• Workers compensation is a user-entered planning input and the presets are not source-verified rate tables.
• Overhead allocation is a simple annual per-employee planning input from the user.

Limitations

• Does not determine taxable wage treatment, payroll deposits, Form 940, FUTA credit reduction, fringe benefits, or state unemployment law.
• Does not determine workers compensation class code, state bureau rate, insurer quote, EMR, payroll audit, or policy coverage.
• Does not determine FLSA regular rate, overtime, exempt status, prevailing wage, state/local wage-hour law, or CBA requirements.
• Does not model seasonal layoffs, furloughs, part-time schedules, productivity variation, market pricing, contract risk, or bid approval.
• Does not use activity-based costing, department-level overhead allocation, or employer-specific accounting policy.

References

• IRS Publication 15 (2026) - employer Social Security, Medicare, FUTA, and federal payroll-tax context.
• SSA 2026 Cost-of-Living Adjustment Fact Sheet - Social Security taxable maximum and rate split context.
• BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation - compensation category context.
• DOL WHD Fact Sheets #22 and #56A - hours worked and regular-rate source-boundary context.
• NCCI Basic Manual and Experience Rating source pointers - workers compensation classification and EMR context.

Frequently Asked Questions