Short-term disability: what a week of benefit pays
Enter your salary and the two figures of your plan summary, the share of pay and the weekly maximum. The weekly check after tax and the total for your absence appear at once.
Example, not your result yet· change a figure to see yours
Short-term disability, a week after tax
$558
$692 before tax · 58% of take-home pay
| Total for the absence, before tax | $18,000 |
| Federal income tax | $2,160 |
| Social Security and Medicare | $1,324 |
| Total in hand | $14,516 |
| Take-home pay now, a week | $969 |
| Pay lost in the waiting period | $969 |
The benefit is fully taxable; employer-funded short-term disability is sick pay, with Social Security and Medicare withheld (IRS Pub. 15-A).
Compiled by Radif Partners · How the figures are built · IRS rules and BLS plan data read November 7, 2026
Short-term disability replaces part of your weekly pay for a limited time, usually after a short waiting period. The median private plan in the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of March 2026 pays 60% of weekly earnings up to a median weekly maximum of $1,030, for 26 weeks at the median. At $52,000 a year, that is $600 a week before tax. When the employer pays the premium, which is the case for 90% of covered private workers, the benefit is taxable sick pay: federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare come off and about $482 a week remains for a single filer over a thirteen-week absence, against a take-home pay of $845. If you pay the premium with after-tax money, all $600 stays. Only 42% of civilian workers have access to a plan.
The formula in your plan summary
A short-term disability plan writes its benefit as a share of your weekly earnings, often 50%, 60% or 66.67%, and limits it with a weekly maximum. The summary plan description also gives the waiting period, the number of weeks payable and the definition of earnings, which in most group plans means base pay without overtime, bonus or commission. The calculator above takes those four figures. Its defaults are the medians the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured in private industry in March 2026 (BLS, Employee Benefits in the United States), so a reader without the summary at hand still gets a realistic figure, and a reader with it gets the exact one.
The weekly maximum is the figure to look for first. Among private plans with a maximum, the tenth percentile is $170 a week, the 25th $450, the median $1,030, the 75th $1,500 and the 90th $2,500. A cap of $450 stops a 60% plan at a salary of $39,000; above it, the replacement rate falls with every raise. At $90,000 a year, the same plan pays $450 a week, which is 26% of gross pay rather than 60%.
Your weekly short-term disability check
Example, not your result yet· change a figure to see yours
Short-term disability, a week after tax
$363
| Total for the absence, before tax | $11,700 |
| Federal income tax | $1,404 |
| Social Security and Medicare | $861 |
| Total in hand | $9,435 |
Tax: the premium payer decides
IRS Publication 525 answers the tax question by looking at who paid for the coverage. If the employer paid the whole premium, the benefit is income. If you paid it with money that had already been taxed, the benefit is not. A pre-tax payroll deduction through a cafeteria plan counts as an employer payment, so the benefit is taxable even though the money came out of your paycheck. For a plan whose cost is shared, only the employer's share of the benefit is taxed; Publication 15-A measures that share over the three policy years before the year of the claim.
Short-term disability paid under an employer plan is sick pay, which brings payroll tax: Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% on the taxable part, for the first 6 calendar months after the last month you worked. Short-term claims rarely last longer, so in practice the whole employer-funded benefit carries payroll tax. On the $7,800 paid for a thirteen-week absence at $52,000, the employer-paid version costs $936 of federal income tax and $597 of payroll tax; the after-tax version costs nothing. The tax calculator handles longer claims and other income.
Short-term and long-term together
Short-term disability is meant to carry you until a long-term plan starts. When the two plans come from the same employer, the long-term elimination period usually matches the short-term duration, so that benefits follow one another without a gap: thirteen weeks of short-term disability followed by a long-term plan with a 90-day wait, or twenty-six weeks followed by 180 days. When they do not match, the elimination period calculator measures the gap your savings would have to fill. Once the long-term plan starts, its own formula, maximum and offsets apply (long-term disability calculator).
Where a state program comes first
A few states run mandatory temporary disability programs funded by payroll contributions, and employers there may coordinate their own plan with the state benefit. That is why the BLS finds 81% of private workers in the Middle Atlantic region with access to short-term disability, twice the national private rate of 44%. State programs have their own formulas and caps and are not computed here; this page deals with the group or individual plan that pays on its own terms.
What to check before you count on it
Read four lines: the share of earnings, the weekly maximum, the waiting period and the maximum number of weeks. Then look for the clause on other income: a short-term plan can subtract sick pay, a state benefit or workers' compensation for the same weeks. Finally, check your pay slip for the deduction label. A line marked pre-tax means the benefit will be taxed when you claim, and the pre-tax or after-tax comparison shows whether switching at the next enrollment would be worth it.