Illinois Overtime Calculator

Illinois overtime in one paragraph

Illinois requires time and a half for hours worked over 40 in a workweek, and that is the whole of the state rule. There is no daily overtime, no Sunday premium and no holiday premium. What makes overtime complicated in Illinois is not the trigger but the rate — because the rate the law uses is almost never the hourly rate printed on your offer letter, and the gap between the two is where most underpayments hide. Everything below is about closing that gap.

The regular rate is not your hourly rate

The Fair Labor Standards Act calculates overtime on the regular rate: total includable remuneration for the workweek, divided by total hours worked. Illinois adopts the same machinery. What has to go into that total is broader than most people expect:

Take a straightforward case. You earn $22 an hour, you worked 48 hours, and you hit a $150 production bonus. Most payroll systems pay you $22 for 40 hours, $33 for 8 hours, and then add the bonus on the end. That is wrong. The bonus has to enter the regular rate first: $1,056 in wages plus $150 in bonus is $1,206 across 48 hours, so the regular rate is $25.13, not $22. The overtime premium is half of that on 8 hours — $100.50 rather than $88 — and the difference is real money that compounds every week you work overtime. Because the calculation runs on the same engine that powers the hourly paycheck calculator, you can carry the corrected gross straight over and see what reaches your bank account.

Two rates in one week

If you work part of the week at one rate and part at another for the same employer, the default method is a weighted average: add the straight-time earnings at both rates, divide by all hours worked, and use that blended figure for the whole week. Thirty hours at $20 and twenty hours at $25 is $1,100 across 50 hours — a regular rate of $22 and an overtime premium of $110. An employer may instead pay time and a half at the rate in effect during the overtime hours, but only under a prior agreement satisfying 29 CFR 778.415 to 778.421. Without that agreement in place before the work is done, simply using whichever rate is lower is an underpayment.

Bonuses that cover several weeks

A quarterly or annual nondiscretionary bonus does not escape the calculation by being paid late. Under 29 CFR 778.209 it has to be apportioned back across the workweeks in which it was earned, and additional overtime recalculated for each of those weeks. Where a week-by-week allocation is genuinely impracticable, the regulation allows an equal amount per week or an equal amount per hour worked, provided the method is reasonable and equitable. What is not allowed is ignoring the bonus because the check arrived in a week you worked 35 hours.

Salaried does not mean exempt

Two tests have to be met before an employee loses the right to overtime, and payment on a salary basis is only the first. The salary has to be at least $684 a week, or $35,568 a year, and the actual duties performed have to fit the executive, administrative or professional exemption — a job title does not do it. The threshold has had a turbulent few years: the Department of Labor's 2024 rule would have raised it to $844 and then $1,128 a week, but it was vacated nationwide in November 2024, and in May 2026 the Department published a technical rule restoring the previous regulatory text. The operative figures today are $684 a week and $107,432 for the highly compensated employee test.

For a salaried non-exempt worker the regular rate is the weekly salary divided by the hours the salary is intended to cover. A $900 salary meant to cover 45 hours produces a $20 regular rate, and the overtime premium on the five hours over 40 is a further $10 an hour on top of the salary already paid.

Rest days and meal breaks

The One Day Rest In Seven Act is not an overtime law, but it governs the same long weeks and it was significantly amended with effect from 1 January 2023. Employees are entitled to at least 24 consecutive hours of rest in every consecutive seven-day period — a rolling test now, not a calendar week, which closed the loophole allowing twelve straight days across a week boundary. Anyone working 7.5 continuous hours or more gets a 20-minute meal period beginning no later than five hours into the shift, plus an additional 20 minutes for every further 4.5 continuous hours, so a twelve-hour shift carries two meal periods. Reasonable restroom time does not count as the meal period.

The penalties are per offense and they are not trivial: for employers with fewer than 25 employees, up to $250 to the Department of Labor plus up to $250 in damages per employee per offense; for larger employers, $500 and $500. Every missed meal period and every seven-day stretch without a rest day counts separately.

Tax on overtime, and the deduction that does not help Illinois

Overtime is ordinary wages. There is no special tax rate, and the reason a heavy overtime check looks brutally taxed is that federal withholding annualizes the period — it treats one big week as though every week will be that big, and corrects itself at filing. The Illinois side is simply 4.95% of everything, as covered on the deductions guide.

What has changed federally is worth stating precisely, because it is widely misreported. IRC section 225, created in July 2025, allows a deduction for qualified overtime compensation of up to $12,500, or $25,000 on a joint return, for tax years 2025 through 2028. Three details decide whether it applies to you:

• Only the premium half counts. The statute covers overtime "in excess of the regular rate" — the "half" of time-and-a-half, not the whole payment. Eight overtime hours at a $30 regular rate produce $360 of gross overtime and $120 of qualified overtime.
• Only FLSA-required overtime counts. Premium pay required by a collective bargaining agreement, a state daily-overtime rule, or a contract — but not by section 7 of the FLSA — does not qualify. Nor does anything paid to an exempt employee.
• It phases out. The deduction falls by $100 for every $1,000 of modified adjusted gross income above $150,000, or $300,000 on a joint return, and disappears entirely at $275,000 and $550,000 respectively.

And it does nothing at all for your Illinois tax. The deduction is taken below the AGI line on Schedule 1-A; Form IL-1040 begins at federal AGI and Illinois has enacted no corresponding subtraction. It also does not reduce Social Security or Medicare — overtime remains fully FICA-taxable. Nor is it automatic in your paycheck: the 2026 Form W-4 lets you account for it in Step 4(b), but if you do not file an updated W-4 the benefit arrives only when you file.

If you have been underpaid

Illinois takes wage underpayment seriously. Under 820 ILCS 105/12 an employee can recover three times the underpayment, plus damages of 5% of the underpayment for each month it goes unpaid, plus costs and attorney's fees; the Department of Labor may add a penalty of up to 20% for willful or repeated violations. The parallel provision in the Wage Payment and Collection Act runs on similar lines. Start by asking for the calculation in writing — a genuine regular-rate error is usually a payroll configuration problem rather than bad faith, and employers fix it once it is pointed out. Before you do, run your own numbers above and read the pay stub guide, because since the Pay Stub Protection Act your employer has to give you the itemized records that prove it either way.

Related tools

Overtime rarely arrives alone. If you are tipped, the overtime arithmetic is different again and the tipped wage calculator handles it — overtime for a tipped employee runs on the full minimum wage less the tip credit, never on the cash wage. If your overtime comes with a bonus paid as a lump sum, the bonus tax calculator covers the supplemental withholding side. And for the whole paycheck once the gross is right, the Illinois paycheck calculator takes it from there.