Long-term disability: your monthly check after offsets and tax
Copy the share of pay and the monthly maximum from your plan summary, add a Social Security award if you have one, and say who pays the premium. The check that reaches your account appears at once.
Example, not your result yet· change a figure to see yours
Long-term disability in hand, a month
$2,822
67% of take-home pay · plan pays $3,000
| Plan formula before the maximum | $3,000 |
| Benefit before offsets | $3,000 |
| Offsets subtracted | $0 |
| Paid by the plan | $3,000 |
| Federal income tax, a month | $178 |
| Social Security and Medicare, first months | $689 over 3 months |
| Take-home pay now, a month | $4,199 |
The benefit is fully taxable for federal income tax because the premium is paid by my employer.
Compiled by Radif Partners · How the figures are built · IRS rules and BLS plan data read November 7, 2026
A long-term disability plan pays a share of your monthly earnings, limited by a monthly maximum, minus the other disability income it lists. In March 2026 the median private plan with a fixed formula paid 60% of earnings, and half of the plans with a maximum capped the benefit at $10,000 a month or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At $75,000 a year, the formula gives $3,750 a month. Employer-paid, it is taxable, and a single filer keeps about $3,482 after federal income tax in 2026, 68% of take-home pay; bought with after-tax money, the full $3,750 stays. A Social Security award of $1,800 cuts the plan check to $1,950. Benefits usually run to an age written in the contract, often the Social Security retirement age. Only 38% of civilian workers have access to a plan at work.
From the plan formula to the check
The calculator follows the order your plan uses. First the gross benefit: monthly earnings times the plan percentage, limited by the monthly maximum. Then the offsets: Social Security disability benefits, benefits paid to your family on your record, workers' compensation, a state disability benefit, sometimes a pension or wages from part-time work, each subtracted as the contract lists it. If the offsets are larger than the benefit, the plan's minimum benefit applies, when there is one; enter it from your summary, because minimums are contract terms and vary. Last, federal tax, which depends on who paid the premium.
The defaults are the plan provisions the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured in private industry in March 2026: 60% of earnings and a monthly maximum of $10,000. The spread of maximums is wide. The tenth percentile is $4,000, the 25th $6,000, the 75th and 90th $15,000. At the tenth percentile, a 60% plan stops replacing 60% of pay above $80,000 a year. In the public sector the median maximum is lower, $5,000 (BLS, March 2026).
Your long-term disability check with your own maximum
Example, not your result yet· change a figure to see yours
Long-term disability in hand, a month
$5,416
| Plan formula before the maximum | $9,000 |
| Benefit before offsets | $6,000 |
| Offsets subtracted | $0 |
| Paid by the plan | $6,000 |
Tax on the monthly benefit
Under IRS Publication 525, a benefit is income when the employer paid the premium or when you paid it by pre-tax payroll deduction, and tax-free when you paid it with after-tax money. Private employers pay the entire long-term disability premium for 96% of covered workers, so most group benefits are taxable. The difference is large over a long claim: at $75,000, the employer-paid benefit loses about $268 a month to federal income tax, or $3,220 a year. Some employers let you choose to pay the premium after tax, or add its cost to your taxable wages, precisely to make the benefit tax-free; the election calculator compares both.
Payroll tax also applies at first. A group benefit funded by the employer is sick pay, and Social Security and Medicare are due on it for the first 6 calendar months after the last month you worked (Publication 15-A). With a 90-day elimination period, about three of those months fall inside the claim; the calculator shows the amount. After that, only income tax remains.
Social Security and the plan check
A plan that subtracts Social Security disability expects you to apply for it, and many reduce the check by an estimate of the award until you have a decision. When the award arrives with back pay for past months, the plan recovers the overpayment, often as a lump sum. Together, the plan check and the award usually stay at the plan percentage of your earnings: with a $1,800 award, the plan pays $1,950 and the total is $3,750 before tax. The offset calculator follows that total over time, including cost-of-living raises.
What the whole claim is worth
Long-term benefits are paid for years, which is why the definition of disability and the benefit period matter as much as the monthly amount. A $3,750 benefit from age 45 to 65 adds up to $900,000 before tax, without any cost-of-living rider. A plan that switches from your own occupation to any occupation after the first months can stop long before that age; the own-occupation calculator measures how much of the total depends on that clause. Group coverage usually ends when you leave the employer, and some plans let you convert it to an individual policy within a short window.
Reading the summary plan description
Five items carry the answer: the percentage and the definition of earnings, the monthly maximum, the elimination period, the list of other income benefits and the end of the benefit period. A sixth, the contribution line, tells you whether the benefit will be taxed. Write them next to the calculator fields and the estimate becomes your plan's, not a median.