Georgia Employer Payroll Taxes (2026): Rates, Wage Base & Cost Per Hire
What an employer pays in Georgia: a new-employer unemployment rate of 2.7% on the first $9,500 of each employee's wages, plus federal Social Security, Medicare and FUTA. A $60,000 hire costs $64,889 before benefits — every rate cited to the agency that published it.
A $60,000 hire in Georgia, priced
$64,889
Wages plus employer taxes, before benefits and overhead. That is 1.08× the salary.
- Social Security (employer half)
- $3,720.00
- Medicare (employer half)
- $870.00
- Federal unemployment (FUTA)
- $42.00
- State unemployment (Georgia)
- $256.50
Georgia taxes the first $9,500 of each wage at 2.7%. GDOL states the new-employer rate two ways and they are not quite the same claim. FAQ, verbatim: "New or newly covered employers are assigned a total tax rate of 2.70 percent until such time as they are eligible for a rate calculation based on their experience rating history." Employer Handbook (DOL-224, R-11-24) p.72, verbatim: "If you are a new employer, you will be assigned a tax rate of 2.7 percent until you are eligible for a rate computation based on your experience history. The rate cannot be reduced below 2.7 percent for any calendar year until you have been charged with benefit payments for 36 consecutive months ending on the computation date of each year." The FAQ calls 2.70% a TOTAL tax rate, while the DOL-626 rate notice shows "Contribution Rate + Admin. Assessment = Total Tax Rate" as two separate lines — so whether the administrative assessment sits inside or on top of 2.70% is not resolved by anything GDOL publishes. See the Administrative Assessment surcharge entry.
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Estimate only — not tax, legal, or accounting advice. This is the published math for Georgia employer payroll taxes. Confirm final figures with your payroll provider, accountant, or the state agency before acting on them.
Workers' compensation is priced by class code, payroll, and insurer — there is no honest flat rate. Get a quote from your state fund or a licensed broker, then add it here.
Only states whose unemployment-tax rate we have read on the agency’s own page appear here. 15 of 51 so far — the rest are being verified, and a state we have not read gets no entry rather than a guess.
Prefilled from BLS March 2026, private industry workers: benefits are 30.1% of total compensation, which is 43.1% of wages. Replace it with your actual cost if you know it.
True annual cost
$111,327
A $70,000 salary costs 1.59× what it says on the offer letter.
Per contracted hour
$53.52
Per productive hour
$56.80
| Gross wages | $70,000.00 |
| Social Security (employer half) | $4,340.00 |
| Medicare (employer half) | $1,015.00 |
| Federal unemployment (FUTA) | $42.00 |
| State unemployment (Arizona)One rate for every industry — Arizona does not vary the new-employer rate by NAICS, unlike Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in this same batch. DES's 2026 rate chart states it as a standalone line, verbatim: "New Employer Rate - 2.00%". The duration is stated on DES's Calculating Unemployment Taxes page, verbatim: "Arizona uses a reserve ratio system to determine the tax rates. If you are a new employer (and not a successor), your tax rate is 2.0% for at least 2 calendar years." Note "at least" — the employer stays at 2.00% until it has enough experience, not for exactly two years. | $160.00 |
| Benefits | $30,170.00 |
| Overhead (equipment, software, space) | $5,600.00 |
| Total | $111,327.00 |
Not included: workers’ compensation. Workers' compensation is priced by class code, payroll, and insurer — there is no honest flat rate. Get a quote from your state fund or a licensed broker, then add it here.
- Net-yield rate adjustment (A.R.S. § 23-730): Not a separate charge — a statutory recalibration already baked into every rate in this pack, and the reason Arizona's figures are odd two-decimal values rather than round schedule steps. DES, verbatim, at the head of the 2026 chart: "ARS 23-730 requires adjustment of the regular tax rates to produce only the net required yield each year. The Arizona adjusted rates effective for calendar year 2026 are as follows:". Every rate below moves year to year even when an employer's own reserve ratio does not.
- Job Training Tax: REFERENCED BY DES BUT NO 2026 RATE IS PUBLISHED, so none is asserted. DES's Unemployment Insurance Tax FAQ still carries the questions "Does the online Unemployment Tax and Wage Report System calculate Job Training Tax?" and "My report was late, but I paid all the taxes due, including Job Training Tax; why did I get a notice saying I still owe Job Training Tax?", but the linked answer pages carry no rate, and DES's operative 2026 publication — the UIT-0603A rate chart — does not mention a job training tax at all. Recorded here so that a reader who meets the term on a DES page knows why it is absent from the arithmetic. RETRY ROUTE: DES Unemployment Tax Office, 602-771-6606, or a future revision of UIT-0603A.
- Dividing by 2080 contracted hours gives $53.52 an hour, but 15 days of paid time off mean only 1960 hours are actually worked — 6.13% more per hour of work delivered. Use the productive-hour figure when you price a job.
Employee or contractor?
A contractor at $56.80/hour costs you the same as this employee.
- A contractor sets a higher hourly rate partly because they pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare themselves, carry their own insurance, and are paid for no time they do not work. That difference is the point of the comparison rather than a hidden cost.
- Whether a role can lawfully be a contractor is a classification question decided by how the work is controlled and directed — not by which option is cheaper, and not by what the contract says. Getting it wrong is expensive, and this calculator cannot answer it.
Personal 1099 tax depth lives at workmoneytax.com, including the household-employer rules if you are hiring someone for your home.
Employee Cost Calculator: computed in your browser from verified federal and state rates. Nothing is transmitted. Standard year is 2080 hours.
Hiring for your household rather than a business? Nanny and household-employer payroll is covered at workmoneytax.com, which is also where the employee side of a paycheck lives. Compare Georgia against every other verified state →
Verified 2026-08-05 against Georgia Department of Labor — Employers FAQs, Unemployment Insurance (taxable wage base; new-employer rate) (effective 2026-01-01)
Verified 2026-08-04 against Social Security Administration — Contribution and Benefit Base (Automatic Determinations), 2026 (effective 2026-01-01)
Verified 2026-08-04 against IRS Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide — section 14, Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax (effective 2026-01-01)
Source of record
- State workforce agency — Georgia unemployment tax rates ↗State workforce agency
- Social Security Administration — Contribution and Benefit Base (Automatic Determinations), 2026 ↗Social Security Administration
- IRS Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide — section 14, Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax ↗Internal Revenue Service
🎓 Understand this tool
What it is
The full cost of employing someone, which is always more than the salary. It adds the taxes an employer owes on wages, the benefits you provide, and the overhead a person consumes — then divides the total by the hours actually worked rather than the hours contracted.
How it works
Employer taxes come in four parts. Social Security is 6.2% of wages up to a yearly ceiling. Medicare is 1.45% with no ceiling at all. Federal unemployment is 6.0% less a 5.4% credit for paying your state on time, so 0.6% on the first $7,000. State unemployment is your state’s own rate on its own, usually low, taxable wage base. Benefits and overhead are then added as percentages of salary.
Getting the most from it
- Enter the salary you are considering and pick your state — only states whose rate we have read on the agency’s own page appear in the list.
- Set benefits as a share of salary. If you do not know it, federal survey data puts benefits near 30% of total compensation across private industry.
- Add overhead: equipment, software, workspace, and the management time a hire consumes.
- Open the detail panel and enter paid time off, which changes the cost of an hour of work delivered without changing the annual cost.
- Enter a contractor rate to see which is more expensive at the rates in front of you.
Reading your result
The multiplier is the quickest read: it says what a dollar of salary really costs. The per-productive-hour figure is the one to quote a job from, because it counts only hours someone is actually working. The line-by-line table shows which part of the stack is large — usually benefits rather than tax.
What it can't tell you
It excludes workers’ compensation, because premiums are priced by class code and insurer and no flat rate would be true for everyone. It uses the new-employer unemployment rate; an established business has its own experience rate, which may be higher or lower. It cannot tell you whether a role should be an employee or a contractor — that is decided by how the work is controlled, not by which is cheaper.
Frequently asked questions
2.7% for 2026, applied to the first $9,500 of each employee's wages. That caps the tax at $256.50 per employee per year. An established employer pays their own experience rate instead, which may be higher or lower.
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