The wage brackets for income tax withholding are outlined by the IRS in IRS Publication 15-T Federal Income Tax Withholding Method (released early each calendar year).
If you compute payroll manually, your employee has submitted a Form W-4 for 2020 or later, and you prefer to use the Wage Bracket method, use the worksheet below and the Wage Bracket Method tables that follow to figure federal income tax withholding.
The Wage Bracket Method tables cover only up to approximately $100,000 in annual wages. If you can't use the Wage Bracket Method tables because taxable wages exceed the amount from the last bracket of the table (based on filing status and pay period), use the Percentage Method tables in section 4.
If you don't want to use the wage bracket tables to figure how much income tax to withhold, you can use a percentage computation and the appropriate rate table. This method works for any number of withholding allowances the employee claims and any amount of wages.
Wage ranges based on the percentage method of annual wages for a single individual (after subtracting withholding allowances) for wages paid in 2019 are as follows:
The 00.0% bracket applies to wages up to $3,800
The 10.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $3,800
The 12.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $13,675
The 22.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $43,925
The 24.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $89,325
The 32.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $167,100
The 35.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $211,150
The 37.0% bracket starts when wages exceed $522,200