Locum tenens take-home pay by state, 2026
Self-employment tax and federal brackets are the same wherever you work. The state line is the only part of a locum's tax bill that changes with the assignment — and on a $336,000 contract year the spread between the best and worst state is over $31,000.
Every figure on these pages is produced by the same take-home calculator you can run yourself, holding the contract constant and varying only the state: MD/DO, $1,600 a day, 5 days a week, 42 weeks a year, single filer, no business expenses claimed.
| State | State + local tax | Cash you keep | Effective hourly | Keep rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $0 | $227,975 | $135.70 | 67.8% |
| New York (outside NYC) | −$18,762 | $209,213 | $124.53 | 62.3% |
| California | −$25,521 | $202,454 | $120.51 | 60.3% |
| New York City (resident) | −$31,785 | $196,190 | $116.78 | 58.4% |
Detailed state pages
Texas
No individual income tax, and the highest retained share available to a locum anywhere. Also the franchise tax obligation that catches out-of-state clinicians who form an entity.
New York
Cheaper than California at the state level. The city tax is a residency tax, not a workplace tax — and NYC is the worst S-corp jurisdiction in the country.
California
A nine-step ladder to 12.3%, 2026 brackets still unpublished, and a 1.5% entity tax that quietly eats an S-corp election.
Why only three states have their own page
The calculator already covers all fifty states and the District of Columbia — nothing is missing from the tool. These three have written pages because each one behaves differently enough to be worth explaining: a no-income-tax state, a long-ladder state with an entity tax, and a state whose city tax and S-corp treatment are unlike anywhere else. More states will get their own page as they are written properly rather than generated. A page that only restates a rate you can already read in a dropdown is not worth publishing.
All fifty states
For any state not listed above, select it in the calculator — the same 2026 schedules, standard deductions, exemption credits and state-specific caveats are applied, and the results panel surfaces the caveat for whichever state you choose.
For a ranked comparison across every state at once, with the methodology written out, see the highest-paying states for locum physicians in 2026.
These pages each model a single state. If you worked assignments in more than one — which most locums do — the question of which state returns you actually have to file is answered separately, along with how the resident credit stops the same income being taxed twice.