Canadian employee cost calculator
Choose a province, enter a gross annual salary, and estimate what the employee takes home plus what the hire really costs your business. Add optional benefits, compare the salary to a provincial role benchmark, and unlock a directional offshore savings range.
Core payroll math is based on 2026 CRA and Revenu Québec rates. Role benchmarks use the official 2025 Job Bank wages dataset.
Optional employer costs
These are not universal payroll deductions, but they often matter when you are budgeting the real cost of a hire.
Optional employee deductions
RRSP is treated as a pre-tax deduction for planning purposes. Benefit share and other deductions are treated as after-tax deductions.
What is included by default?
The default calculation includes the core statutory payroll deductions and employer contributions: federal and provincial income tax, CPP and EI outside Quebec, and QPP / EI / QPIP in Quebec. It does not automatically include every possible province- or industry-specific employer cost like WSIB / WCB / CNESST, health taxes, recruiting fees, or private benefits unless you add them above.
How to use this calculator
- Enter the gross annual salary and choose the employee’s province or territory.
- Add a role if you want a provincial benchmark and a directional offshore savings range.
- Layer in optional costs like benefits or workplace insurance to move from payroll math to a more realistic budget.
- Use the benchmark card to sanity-check whether the salary is below, near, or above the provincial median.
Notes and limits
- This is a planning tool, not a pay stub. It is meant to be directionally useful before you run live payroll.
- Quebec is calculated separately because the province has its own payroll contributions and source-deduction rules.
- The benchmark card uses the 2025 official Job Bank wages dataset, rolled up to the provincial level and annualized when Job Bank publishes hourly wages.
- The offshore savings card is an estimate based on the role category and the salary-comparison patterns in our hiring abroad guide. It is not a quote.
Sources
- CRA T4127 payroll deduction formulas, 123rd edition effective July 1, 2026
- CRA current 2026 federal and provincial tax brackets
- 2026 EI maximum insurable earnings and premium rates
- CRA CPP and CPP2 earnings ceilings for 2026
- Revenu Québec QPP rates and ceilings for 2026
- Revenu Québec QPIP premium rates for 2026
- Revenu Québec income tax rates for 2026
- Job Bank wages open-data dataset (2025)
Last updated: July 17, 2026. We will refresh this page when CRA, Revenu Québec, or Job Bank publish new rates or wage files. Spot an error?