Travel nurse pay calculator

How to evaluate a travel nurse pay package

A travel offer usually combines taxable hourly wages with housing, meals, or other allowances. The headline weekly number can be useful, but only when every offer is compared with the same assumptions about paid hours, stipend treatment, taxes, and weeks worked. NursePay keeps those pieces visible instead of converting the package into one unexplained number.

What the calculator does

1. Multiplies the taxable hourly rate by entered weekly hours.
2. Adds the housing, meals, and other weekly stipends to show weekly gross.
3. Applies your estimated tax percentage only to entered taxable wages.
4. Adds the stipends back after estimated taxes to show weekly take-home.
5. Multiplies the weekly amounts by paid weeks for annual estimates.

The tax percentage is a planning input, not a tax-return calculation. Actual federal, state, and local withholding depends on filing status, income, deductions, payroll elections, work location, and other circumstances. The calculator also assumes every entered hour and stipend is paid; it does not model missed shifts, cancellations, overtime, bonuses, or unpaid gaps between contracts.

Stipends are not automatically tax-free

The word “stipend” does not decide tax treatment. IRS rules focus on the assignment, the worker’s tax home, the employer’s reimbursement arrangement, substantiation, and whether excess payments must be returned. Payments made under a qualifying accountable plan for eligible business travel can receive different treatment from wages. Amounts that do not satisfy those requirements may be reported as taxable compensation.

A tax home is generally a person’s regular or main place of business, not automatically a permanent mailing address or family residence. When someone has no regular work location, the IRS considers facts such as business activity near the main home, duplicated living expenses while working away, and whether the person has abandoned that area. There is no universal IRS “50-mile rule” that makes a travel stipend tax-free.

Temporary assignments and duplicated expenses

An assignment expected to last—and actually lasting—one year or less is generally treated differently from an indefinite assignment. If work at one location is realistically expected to continue for more than one year, that location may become the tax home for travel-expense purposes. Facts can change during a contract, and repeated assignments in the same area may need professional review.

Duplicated expenses means maintaining qualifying costs at the tax-home area while separately paying living expenses at the temporary assignment. Using a relative’s address or receiving mail there does not by itself establish the required facts. Keep contracts, assignment dates, housing records, expense reports, and documentation requested by the employer’s reimbursement plan.

Compare contract terms, not only the weekly gross

• Guaranteed hours: identify whether the guarantee is weekly or per pay period and what events permit cancellation.
• Stipend eligibility: check how missed shifts, low census, orientation, call-offs, and start or end weeks affect payment.
• Housing costs: subtract your real short-term housing, utilities, deposits, parking, and duplicated home expenses.
• Benefits and reimbursements: compare insurance, retirement, travel, licensing, credentialing, and continuing-education support.
• Overtime: verify the overtime trigger and rate in writing instead of assuming the advertised blended rate applies.