Deployment Pay Calculator
A month in a designated combat zone changes your pay three ways: $225 of hostile fire or imminent danger pay, a $300 family separation allowance if you have dependents and the separation runs past 30 days, and the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion, which takes your basic pay and the taxable special pays out of federal and state income tax for every month you spend even one day in the zone. Enter your numbers from your LES; the tool shows the monthly and total difference. The SDP calculator handles the 10% savings program separately.
What to do with the difference:
- Put the first $10,000 into the Savings Deposit Program as early as the finance office allows: 10% a year, guaranteed, plus 90 days after you return.
- The exclusion also makes a Roth TSP contribution from excluded pay tax-free going in and coming out. The deployment money stack puts the pieces in order.
- Pre-service debt above 6%? Deployment does not change the SCRA cap, but orders are the proof. Send the rate-cap letter before you leave.
- Check the LES in the zone: HFP/IDP and the tax exclusion should both appear in the first full month. If either is missing, the finance office fixes it with your orders.
How this works
What a month in a designated combat zone adds to your take-home pay: the special pays plus the federal and state tax the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion removes.
The arithmetic
- Adds Hostile Fire Pay / Imminent Danger Pay at $225 a month (37 U.S.C. § 310, read October 28, 2026).
- Adds Family Separation Allowance at $300 a month when you have dependents and the separation runs more than 30 days, paid from day one (37 U.S.C. § 427 as amended by Pub. L. 119-60 § 622, December 18, 2025; the old $250 figure no longer applies).
- Adds the Hardship Duty Pay-Location amount you enter, capped at the $1,500 statutory ceiling (37 U.S.C. § 305).
- Treats basic pay, HFP/IDP and HDP-L as excluded from federal and state income tax for every month with at least one day in the zone (26 U.S.C. § 112; IRS Publication 3), and multiplies the excluded amount by the marginal rates you enter.
- Caps a commissioned officer's exclusion at the highest enlisted basic pay plus HFP/IDP: for 2026, the Senior Enlisted Advisor rate of $11,166.90 (Executive Order 14368, Schedule 8) plus $225, or $11,391.90 a month. Enlisted members and warrant officers are not capped.
The law behind this: 26 U.S.C. § 112
Certain combat zone compensation of members of the Armed Forces: read the statute.
What this does not account for
- BAH, BAS and FSA are never taxable, so they add nothing to the tax saving; the tool excludes only basic pay and the taxable special pays.
- The tax saving is excluded pay times your marginal rate. It ignores deductions, credits and bracket changes, so a low earner near the bottom of a bracket will see a smaller real saving and a high earner a larger one.
- Hardship Duty Pay-Location tiers and locations are set by DoD and could not be read on an official page on October 28, 2026 (DoD sites block automated reads), so you enter the figure from your orders or LES rather than the tool choosing it.
- The IRS had not published the 2026 officer cap on October 28, 2026; the $11,391.90 figure is computed from the 2026 pay table and the statute's rule, the same way the IRS computed $10,983 for 2025.
- Qualifying service means serving in a designated combat zone, qualified hazardous duty area or DoD-certified direct-support area while receiving HFP/IDP. The IRS's own list differs between Publication 3 and its web page (Israel and Manda Bay, Kenya appear only in the PDF; Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the Philippines only on the page, as of October 28, 2026); check your orders and your LES.
- Savings Deposit Program interest is a separate calculator; this one estimates pay and tax only.
Heads up: SCRA Saver publishes general information, not legal or financial advice. Laws change and every situation differs. Confirm details with your installation legal assistance office (free for service members) or a licensed professional.
Do the next thing
- What a deployment adds to your pay HFP, FSA and the tax exclusion, by month.
- The 10% Savings Deposit Program Why early deposits earn double.
- The Military Bank Scorecard 22 institutions, 100 points, every quote shown.
- Every 2026 payday and who posts early DFAS dates plus each bank’s own wording.