Travel therapy pay in Colorado, 2026

Colorado taxes income at a single flat rate, which on a travel therapy package works out to about $42 a week. Two more deductions sit beside it that the pay package will not show you: a FAMLI paid-leave premium on every Colorado paycheck, and — only if the facility is in Denver — a flat $5.75 a month head tax that is not a percentage of anything.

By Emre Ceylan. Income tax figures below are produced by the same pay calculator you can run yourself, with the inputs stated. The calculator does not model FAMLI or the Denver tax, so those lines are calculated separately at 2026 rates. Tax data last reviewed 13 September 2026.

The number, on a standard package

PT, $32/hr taxable wage, 40 hours, $1,000 weekly housing stipend, $315 weekly M&IE, 13-week contract, single filer, qualifying tax home maintained, facility outside Denver:

Before FAMLI the contract nets $2,347 a week and $31,015 over 13 weeks. Across 48 weeks that is $114,518 of take-home before the premium — equivalent to a permanent Colorado salary of $160,350 before tax.

Why a flat rate lands where it does

Colorado applies one rate to all taxable income, and it applies it only to the $1,280 of taxable wages, not to the $2,595 package. Roughly half of travel therapy pay is untaxed stipend, so the flat rate lands on a base that is already halved — which is why a 4.4% state costs this contract only $42 a week.

That puts Colorado between California and New York on the income tax line: more than California's graduated schedule takes at this wage level, less than New York's.

FAMLI: the premium on every Colorado paycheck

Colorado's Family and Medical Leave Insurance programme charges a premium of 0.88% of wages for 2026, down from 0.9%, split evenly between employer and employee. Your share is 0.44% — $5.63 a week on this package, about $73 across a 13-week contract.

It stops at the Social Security wage base of $184,500, far above a travel therapist's taxable wages. Like income tax, it is charged on wages only, so the stipend half of the package never sees it.

The Denver head tax, which is not a percentage

Because it counts calendar months rather than weeks, a 13-week Denver contract costs $17.25 if it falls across three months and $23.00 if its start and end dates touch a fourth. Trivial money. It is on this page because it is the line people find on a first Denver pay stub and cannot explain, and because the calculator's local tax field takes a percentage and cannot model a flat monthly charge.

The number that is a hundred times larger than the Denver tax

Everything above assumes a qualifying tax home. Without one, every stipend becomes taxable wages — and Colorado's flat rate and FAMLI premium are both then charged on the full $2,595:

$5,954 on one contract. That is more than a hundred times the Denver head tax and eighty times the FAMLI premium. What a qualifying tax home actually requires →

Colorado against the states travellers compare it to

Like-for-like on income tax only, which is how every state page on this site is built — FAMLI, Washington's premiums, California's SDI and New York's Paid Family Leave are all left out of this table so the comparison stays even.

Colorado sits $541 behind Texas over a whole contract — about $1.04 an hour. A Colorado contract paying $2 an hour more than a Texas one has already won.

Also worth reading before a Colorado contract

• Licences and compact privileges — whether this state participates in your discipline's compact changes both the cost and how long it takes to start.
• SNF vs outpatient vs home health — the setting moves take-home by more than the state does.
• Tax home explained — the $5,954 question.
• Multi-state taxes — Colorado taxes the wages you earn there even if your tax home is elsewhere, which means a nonresident return.
• GSA per diem rates — Denver and the mountain resort counties carry their own lodging rates, some of them seasonal.