Travel therapy pay in Washington, 2026

Washington does not tax wages, so on the income tax line a Washington contract is identical to a Texas one. What Texas does not have is two payroll premiums taken from your wages — $17.76 a week on a typical package, about $231 across 13 weeks. Neither appears in the pay package a recruiter sends. One of them, WA Cares, most travellers who live outside Washington can apply to stop paying.

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 Washington's payroll premiums, so those two lines are calculated separately at the published 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:

Without the two premiums this contract is indistinguishable from Texas: $2,389 a week and $31,556 over 13 weeks. With them, it is $2,371 and $31,325. Across 48 working weeks the premiums come to about $852 on this package.

The two deductions that are not income tax

Both are percentages of wages. Both therefore apply to the $1,280 taxable portion of a travel package and not to the untaxed stipends — the same reason state income tax bites so lightly on travel pay.

Paid Family and Medical Leave

The 2026 premium is 1.13% of gross wages, and the employee can be charged up to 71.43% of it — an effective deduction of about 0.807%. It stops at the Social Security wage base of $184,500, which a travel therapist's taxable wages do not approach.

Living in another state does not remove it. The programme looks at where the work is done: an employee who lives elsewhere but works entirely in Washington has work localised to Washington and is subject to the premium — and, if they work enough qualifying hours there, eligible for the benefit.

WA Cares Fund

A long-term-care insurance premium of 0.58% of wages, paid entirely by the employee, with no wage cap. On this package it is $7.42 a week.

The part that is specific to travellers: the WA Cares exemption

Three details decide whether it is worth anything on a single contract:

• Timing. An approved exemption takes effect from the first day of the quarter after approval. Apply late in a 13-week assignment and the contract can be over before it starts saving you anything. If you know a Washington contract is coming, apply before it begins.
• It is conditional. If you later establish your primary residence in Washington — take a permanent job there, move there — you must tell your employer and ESD within 90 days. Failing to do so means being assessed the unpaid premiums with interest.
• Residence is ESD's test, not the IRS's. Your tax home and your residence usually point to the same place for a traveller, but they are separate questions decided by separate agencies. Qualifying for one does not automatically settle the other.

The money is modest — about $96 on one 13-week contract at this wage, and around $356 a year if you worked every week in Washington. It is worth ten minutes, not a decision about where to work.

The number that is still thirty times larger

Everything above assumes a qualifying tax home. Without one, every stipend becomes taxable wages — and in Washington that has a second-order effect: both premiums are then charged on the whole $2,595, not on $1,280.

$5,342 on one contract. The WA Cares exemption is worth $96 on the same contract; the tax home is worth more than fifty times that. What a qualifying tax home actually requires →

Washington 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. California's State Disability Insurance and New York's Paid Family Leave are not in their figures either, so this table does not penalise Washington for being the page that shows its premiums.

Even after its premiums, Washington nets more than California or New York on this package before theirs. The whole spread across these five states is under a dollar and a half an hour — a contract paying $2 more anywhere on the list has already won.

Also worth reading before a Washington 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 $5,342 question.
• Multi-state taxes — Washington adds nothing to your return, but the other states you work in this year still will.
• What is a housing stipend? — why the premiums above never touch the stipend half of the package.