How Much Is My Tithe?
Put in what you actually earn, pick your pay cycle, and get the number — per paycheck, per week, per month and per year. It also shows the gap between the before-tax figure and the take-home figure, which is the part most people are really trying to work out. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere.
This is plain arithmetic, not financial or spiritual advice. Everything runs in your browser — nothing you type leaves this page.
Common Questions About Tithing
Do I tithe on gross or net income?
There is no line anywhere in scripture that settles this, which is why the question keeps coming up. Gross is the headline figure an employer quotes; net is what actually lands in the account after tax, insurance, retirement contributions and anything else that comes off before you see it. On a $60,000 salary with roughly a quarter going to deductions, a tenth of gross is $6,000 a year and a tenth of net is about $4,500 — a real gap of $1,500. People who give on gross tend to think of income as everything earned before anyone takes a share. People who give on net tend to think of income as the money they can actually direct. Both positions are defensible and neither is a moral failing. The calculator above shows both figures side by side once you add an approximate deduction rate, so you can decide from your own numbers instead of from the argument.
How much is a tithe on a $50,000 salary?
Ten percent of $50,000 is $5,000 a year. Broken down, that is about $416 a month, $192 every two weeks, or $96 a week — and the weekly figure is usually the one that changes how the number feels, because $96 is a recognisable amount rather than an abstraction. If a quarter of that salary goes to tax and deductions, take-home is around $37,500, and a tenth of that is $3,750 a year, or roughly $312 a month. The reason the annual figure surprises people is that nobody experiences income annually; they experience it one paycheck at a time. Running your own numbers rather than borrowing somebody else’s example is worth the thirty seconds it takes, because pay cycles, deduction rates and side income move the answer further than most people expect.
What if I cannot afford to give ten percent?
Then you give what you can, and the percentage is still doing its job. A tenth is a proportion, not a threshold, and the useful thing about proportions is that they scale honestly in both directions — three percent of a tight month is a real decision, and it costs the person making it something. The trap worth avoiding is the all-or-nothing one: deciding that because ten is out of reach, nothing is worth starting. In practice, almost nobody who ends up at ten percent jumped straight there. They started lower and raised the number the same week their income went up, because money that was never part of the spending pattern is far easier to redirect than money already committed. If ten is not this year’s number, pick the one that is, and set it up so it happens without a fresh decision every month.
Is ten percent still a rule, or is that an Old Testament thing?
Both halves of that question have a fair answer. The tenth is an Old Testament structure, tied to a farming economy and a temple system that no longer exists in that form. The New Testament never restates it as a fixed figure; when Paul writes about giving he talks about deciding in advance, giving in proportion to what a person has, and doing it without reluctance, and he never names a percentage. At the same time Jesus mentions tithing directly and does not abolish it — his complaint in Matthew 23 is with people who measured the herbs in their garden precisely while ignoring mercy and justice completely. The practical read most people land on is that ten percent survives as a benchmark rather than a bill: a reference point that turns a vague intention into a specific number. A benchmark is genuinely useful. It is just not the same thing as an invoice.
Where is a tithe actually supposed to go?
Historically the tenth supported a local worshipping community and the people who could not support themselves — priests, widows, orphans and foreigners are named together in the same instructions, which is worth noticing. Most people today split the difference: a regular amount to a home church or congregation, and the rest across causes they know something about firsthand. The one practical habit worth building is deciding in advance rather than in the moment, because giving settled under pressure at the point of an appeal tends to be smaller, more erratic and more quietly resented than giving settled on an ordinary Tuesday. Whatever you choose, the number itself is the part you can pin down today. Put your real figures into the calculator above and you will have it in about thirty seconds — per paycheck, per month and per year, with the gross and take-home versions sitting side by side.