Take-home pay in Mexico

IMSS contributions do not reduce your income tax base

In almost every country in this tool, social contributions are subtracted before the tax is computed. Not in Mexico. Article 96 of the Income Tax Act is blunt: withholding is computed by applying the scale «to the totality of income obtained in a calendar month».

The only thing subtracted first is the local payroll tax, which no state charges to the worker. So here the income tax is computed on the whole gross, and the worker's IMSS contribution comes off separately, out of what is left. A blog we read while writing this claimed the opposite; the law says what it says.

The employment subsidy has a 6,426.89 $ cliff

Anyone earning up to 11,492.66 $ a month receives the employment subsidy in full. One peso a month more and they lose all of it. There is no transition and no taper: it is a yes or a no.

The consequence is that earning ONE PESO more a year, right at that threshold, costs 6,426.89 $ of net income. You need a pay rise of almost 5 % just to get back to where you were. This is not a quirk of our implementation: it has been in the decree since the progressive table was replaced by a single amount in 2025.

We show it because it is the law and because it is exactly what a tool like this is for. And also because it forced us to rewrite an invariant every other country satisfied: that earning more never leaves you with less. In Mexico that is false.

Your family situation changes nothing, and that is correct

Income tax on wages and salaries has no spouse brackets and no child allowance. If you declare a partner or children and the figure does not move, it is not an oversight in the tool: Mexican law simply does not provide for it at this point.

The personal deductions of article 151 do exist, but they are EXPENSE-based — medical, tuition, mortgage interest, funerals, donations — and capped at 15 % of income or five annual UMA, whichever is lower. This tool does not ask about those expenses.

The 3.15 % going around the internet is wrong

Four published tables of the worker's IMSS rates were consulted while writing this country. THREE were wrong, and two of them agreed on the same mistake: counting the article 25 item twice — once as «sickness and maternity, benefits in kind» and again as «medical expenses for pensioners» — to arrive at 3.15 %. Another omitted it entirely and gave 2.40 %.

The law settles it. Article 106, which funds benefits in kind for ACTIVE insured workers, has three fractions and none carries a 0.375 % worker rate: it carries the employer's fixed quota, the surcharge above three UMA and the government's share. That 0.375 % appears ONCE in the whole law, in article 25, and it is for PENSIONERS.

So the worker's contribution is 2.375 % of the whole contribution base, plus 0.40 % on whatever exceeds three UMA: between 2.375 % and 2.775 % depending on salary. Never 3.15 %.

Where these figures come from

• Annual scale: Annex 8 of the 2026 RMF, published in the Official Gazette on 28 December 2025. Eleven brackets, from 1.92 % to 35 %. It is checked against the ten «cuota fija» figures the Annex itself prints beside each bracket.
• Employment subsidy: decree published on 30 December 2025, 15.02 % of the monthly UMA.
• Worker contributions: articles 25, 106, 107, 147 and 168 of the Social Security Act, together with the Nineteenth transitional article of the 1995 reform. The 0.40 % is not copied from any table: it comes from the law's 2 % minus ten annual cuts of 0.16 points.
• UMA 2026: 117.31 $ daily and 3,566.22 monthly, from INEGI's press release 1/26. The surcharge floor (three UMA) and the contribution ceiling (twenty-five) both hang off it.

An independent calculator citing the SAT agrees on the income tax to within nine cents on 29,885 $, which is the rounding in the Gazette's own table.

What this calculator does not include

• The exemptions for the aguinaldo (up to 30 UMA) and the holiday bonus (up to 15). Here the annual gross is treated as ordinary salary and taxed in full, because the tool cannot know how much of it is aguinaldo. The deviation always runs the same way — slightly more tax than is actually paid — and on the default salary it is about 1,128 $ a year.
• The personal deductions of article 151, which depend on each person's spending.
• The minimum-wage exemption of article 96, which is an exception at one exact point and would insert an artificial step into a continuous curve.
• Profit sharing (PTU), which a large share of workers receive and which is exempt up to fifteen days of minimum wage.
• INFONAVIT as a deduction: it only appears on the payslip of someone with a housing loan. The ordinary 5 % contribution is paid by the employer.