California Schedule X: Brackets, Rates, and Mental Health Tax

California Schedule X is the tax rate schedule you use to calculate state income tax if you file as Single or as Married/Registered Domestic Partner Filing Separately and your California taxable income is over $100,000. For tax year 2025, Schedule X runs through nine brackets starting at 1% on the first $11,079 of taxable income and reaching 12.3% on income above $742,953, with a separate 1% Mental Health Services Tax surcharge on taxable income over $1,000,000 that pushes the top combined rate to 13.3%.¹

If your California taxable income is $100,000 or less, you don’t use Schedule X at all. The Franchise Tax Board (FTB) publishes a simplified tax table for that range, and the math works out the same.²

Who Uses Schedule X

The FTB publishes three rate schedules, one per filing status group. Schedule X applies to:¹

Single filers
Married or Registered Domestic Partners filing separately

Joint filers and qualifying surviving spouses use Schedule Y, which doubles every Schedule X threshold. Head of Household filers use Schedule Z, which sits between the two. Using the wrong schedule for your status produces the wrong tax, so confirm your filing status on Form 540 before you look up a bracket.

One wrinkle for Married/RDP Filing Separately: California is a community property state, so each spouse reports half of all community income plus all of their own separate income.³ The income you plug into Schedule X may not match the wages shown on your W-2.

2025 Schedule X Brackets

For tax year 2025 (returns filed in 2026), the FTB applied a 3.0% California Consumer Price Index adjustment to every threshold.⁴ The Schedule X brackets for Single and Married/RDP Filing Separately are:¹

1% on taxable income from $0 to $11,079
2% on income from $11,079 to $26,272
4% on income from $26,272 to $41,459
6% on income from $41,459 to $57,543
8% on income from $57,543 to $72,736
9.3% on income from $72,736 to $372,424
10.3% on income from $372,424 to $446,908
11.3% on income from $446,908 to $742,953
12.3% on income over $742,953

These rates are marginal, meaning each percentage applies only to the dollars that fall inside its range. A single filer with $100,000 in taxable income doesn’t pay 9.3% on the whole $100,000. The first $11,079 is taxed at 1%, the next slice at 2%, and so on up through the 9.3% bracket, which only touches the dollars above $72,736. The result is that your effective rate (total tax divided by total taxable income) is always lower than the top bracket you reach.

Because the thresholds move each year with inflation, always pull the schedule for the exact tax year you’re filing. A 2024 schedule applied to 2025 income will come out wrong in both directions.

How to Calculate Your Tax Using Schedule X

Each row of the printed schedule gives you three numbers: the income range for that bracket, a base tax amount (the running total already owed on everything below the bracket floor), and the marginal rate inside the bracket. The calculation is:

Find the row your California taxable income falls into.
Subtract the bracket’s lower threshold from your taxable income.
Multiply that difference by the marginal rate for the bracket.
Add the base tax shown for that row.

You don’t need to walk through every lower bracket by hand. The base tax figure already does that work for you.

Worked Example: Single Filer With $800,000 Taxable Income

$800,000 lands in the top regular Schedule X bracket (over $742,953 at 12.3%), which carries a base tax of $72,219.84.¹

$800,000 − $742,953 = $57,047 of income inside the top bracket
$57,047 × 12.3% = $7,016.78
$7,016.78 + $72,219.84 = $79,236.62

That $79,236.62 is the preliminary California income tax before credits.

The 1% Mental Health Services Tax Above $1 Million

California’s often-quoted 13.3% top rate isn’t a Schedule X bracket. It’s the 12.3% top schedule rate plus a 1% surcharge imposed by Revenue and Taxation Code Section 17043, enacted by Proposition 63 in 2004.⁵ The Mental Health Services Tax applies to taxable income exceeding $1,000,000 at 1%.

Three features of this surcharge trip people up:

The $1,000,000 threshold does not double for joint filers. The statute excludes the joint-return provisions of Section 17045, so a married couple filing jointly hits the surcharge at the same $1,000,000 mark as a single filer on Schedule X.⁵
The $1,000,000 threshold does not adjust for inflation. The statute excludes the bracket recomputation provisions of Section 17041, so the threshold has been fixed at $1,000,000 since 2005.
Tax credits can’t offset it. Section 17043 excludes the credit provisions of Section 17039, so credits that eliminate your regular California tax still leave the MHST amount due.

Running the surcharge on a $1,200,000 single filer: Schedule X produces the regular tax up through the 12.3% bracket, and the MHST adds $200,000 × 1% = $2,000 on top.

Getting to the Taxable Income Schedule X Starts From

The number you plug into Schedule X is your California taxable income from Line 19 of Form 540. Getting there takes two steps:²

Start with federal adjusted gross income and apply California-specific additions and subtractions on Schedule CA (540). Some items the IRS taxes California excludes, and some items California taxes the IRS excludes.
Subtract the larger of the California standard deduction or your California itemized deductions.

For 2025, the California standard deduction is $5,706 for Single and Married/RDP Filing Separately filers (the two statuses that use Schedule X), and $11,412 for joint filers, qualifying surviving spouses, and Head of Household filers.⁶

Whatever remains after the deduction is the figure you look up in Schedule X. If that figure is $100,000 or less, use the tax table instead; the FTB directs you to the schedule only when taxable income exceeds $100,000.²

Don’t Confuse the Rate Schedule X With the Amended-Return Schedule X

The FTB uses the name “Schedule X” for two unrelated things. The rate Schedule X in this article is the bracket table published in the annual Tax Rate Schedules PDF.¹ The other Schedule X is a separate form, California Explanation of Amended Return Changes, used when you file an amended return.⁷ If a search result lands you on a page about amended returns, that’s not the bracket schedule. The FTB also offers an online tax calculator that applies the correct schedule for your filing status automatically.⁸

1
California Franchise Tax Board. 2025 California Tax Rate Schedules
2
State of California Franchise Tax Board. 2025 Instructions for Form 540 California Resident Income Tax Return
3
Franchise Tax Board. Married/RDP Filing Separately
4
State of California Franchise Tax Board. Tax News October 2025
5
California Legislative Information. California Revenue and Taxation Code 17043
6
State of California Franchise Tax Board. 2025 Personal Income Tax Booklet
7
State of California Franchise Tax Board. 2025 Instructions for Schedule X California Explanation of Amended Return Changes
8
Franchise Tax Board. Tax Calculator, Tables, and Rates