About the calculator tools
These calculators are arithmetic you can check, not advice. The pay ones use the federal brackets and the standard deduction for the tax year you pick, add Social Security and Medicare at the current wage bases, and apply your state's own brackets, deduction, and exemption along with the programs employees pay into, like California SDI or New Jersey TDI. The tables are updated when the IRS and the states publish new ones each year.
What they deliberately leave out: credits, dependents, itemized deductions, city and county taxes, and whatever your employer's withholding tables decide, which is why a real paycheck is usually a little lighter than the estimate and the difference comes back at filing time. The money ones, loans, mortgages, compound interest, tips, and discounts, are exact formulas with the assumptions listed under each result.