Work out what a deployment actually adds to a month's pay. Basic pay, BAS and BAH do not change because you deployed — what changes is hostile fire or imminent danger pay at $225 a month, family separation allowance at $250 a month for a member with dependents, hardship duty pay where the location is designated for it, and the federal income tax a combat zone stops. The exclusion under 26 U.S.C. §112 covers every month during any part of which you served in the designated area, so a single day in the zone excludes the whole month; enlisted members and warrant officers exclude all of it, and commissioned officers are capped at the senior enlisted basic pay plus their own imminent danger pay. Priced at your grade, your longevity and your household's marginal federal rate, alongside the Savings Deposit Program interest 10% pays on up to $10,000.
Rates last verified August 2026 against the published source tables.
The tax exclusion is usually worth more than both statutory pays together, and it is the part nobody can quote a rate for. Excluded months come off the top of the year's income, so what the exclusion saves is the tax that band would have carried — not an average rate, and not the highest bracket the gross reaches. For a junior enlisted member much of the year is already covered by the standard deduction, so the saving is a smaller share of the excluded pay than most expect; a spouse's earnings raise the band the excluded pay would have sat in, which is why they change the answer.
Family separation on a deployment is FSA-Temporary under DoD FMR Volume 7A, Chapter 27, subpara. 2.3.1.3 — duty away from the permanent station for more than 30 continuous days — rather than the FSA-R that gets named most often, which is the unaccompanied overseas tour. One monthly amount is payable whichever type you qualify under, it needs a DD Form 1561, and it is the line most often missing from an LES because nobody filed the form. Social Security and Medicare keep being withheld throughout: the combat zone excludes income tax, not FICA.
Basic pay does not rise because you deployed. Neither does BAS, and BAH keeps paying at your home station's rate for the household you left there. What changes is four things: hostile fire or imminent danger pay at $225 a month, family separation allowance at $250 a month, hardship duty pay where the location is designated for it, and the federal income tax a combat zone stops being withheld from your pay.
The tax is usually the biggest of the four. The two statutory pays come to $475 a month between them and that is the number most members have in mind. For a mid-career enlisted member the exclusion is worth more than both together, and for an officer it is worth several times more — which is why this page asks for a grade and a filing status rather than adding up allowances.
A day in the zone is a month of exclusion. The exclusion applies to pay for any month during any part of which you served in the designated area, so arriving on the 28th excludes that whole month. Imminent danger pay works the same way. That is why this page counts whole months: a rule with no days in it cannot be made more precise by asking for days.
Enlisted members and warrant officers exclude all of it. DoD FMR Vol 7A Ch. 44 subpara. 2.2.1.1 is explicit: all compensation received for a qualifying month qualifies. Basic pay, imminent danger pay, hardship duty pay, a re-enlistment bonus signed in the zone — all of it comes off the federal return. Allowances were never taxed, so the exclusion cannot make BAH, BAS or family separation any more tax-free than they already were.
Commissioned officers are capped. The same paragraph caps a commissioned officer at the maximum exclusion for the month, which subpara. 2.2.1.2 defines as the senior enlisted member's basic pay plus the imminent danger pay actually payable to that officer. It is a ceiling on the month's whole taxable pay rather than on the basic-pay line alone. Below roughly O-5 it never binds; at O-6 it leaves a few thousand dollars a month taxable.
Which figure this page caps at, and why it is a little old. The senior enlisted rate is published in FMR Ch. 1, and the newest one that chapter carries is $10,758.00 a month, effective 1 April 2025. A later figure exists; the chapter has not been reissued with it and this site transcribes rates rather than deriving them from a raise percentage. So a senior officer's exclusion here is slightly understated rather than overstated by the whole gap between their basic pay and an E-9's, and the result says when the cap was applied.
It is worth your marginal rate, not a headline rate. Excluded months come off the top of the year's income, so what the exclusion saves is the tax that band would have carried — not an average rate, and not the highest bracket your gross reaches. For a junior enlisted member much of the year's pay is already covered by the standard deduction, which is why the saving is a smaller share of the excluded pay than most members expect. A spouse's earnings raise the band the excluded pay would have sat in, which is why this page asks about them.
A deployment on temporary duty is FSA-T. FMR Ch. 27 subpara. 2.3.1.3 defines FSA-Temporary as duty on TDY or TAD away from your permanent station for more than 30 continuous days where your dependents do not live at or near the temporary station. That is what a deployment from a home station is, and it is not the FSA-R that gets named most often — FSA-R is the unaccompanied overseas tour under subpara. 2.3.1.1, and FSA-S is duty aboard a ship away from homeport.
$250 a month, once, whichever one you qualify under. Subpara. 2.3.2 sets one monthly amount and para. 2.1 forbids more than one payment for the same period even where you qualify under two of the three types. It is payable only to a member with dependents, or to a member married to another service member, and it stops the day the separation does.
It pays from day one, but not until day 31. Table 27-1 starts the credit on the date you detached from your station, and the 30-day threshold is a qualifying condition rather than a waiting period — so a deployment that passes 30 days is paid for the whole thing, back to the start. Nothing is paid for a separation that ends at 29 days. A DD Form 1561 substantiates the entitlement, and a claim nobody filed is the usual reason this line is missing from an LES.
The Savings Deposit Program pays 10% a year. Up to $10,000 of principal, at a guaranteed rate no civilian account matches, and interest keeps accruing for 90 days after you leave the zone. It cannot be opened online — it is set up through finance at the deployed location, which is why the money has to be available to move rather than tied up at home. Filling the cap early is the whole game: the ceiling is on principal, so a month not deposited is a month of interest that cannot be recovered later.
Contributions to the TSP from excluded pay are the rare double win. Pay that is excluded from income is still eligible to be contributed, and traditional contributions made from it come back out tax-free — the only circumstance in which traditional TSP money is untaxed on the way in and on the way out. The annual elective deferral limit still applies, and a deployment is when the combined limit for tax-exempt contributions becomes reachable. Set the election before the first excluded paycheck rather than after it.
The SDP interest is taxable even though the pay was not. Interest is income in the year it is paid and is reported to you as such. It is the one line on a deployment that does not come home tax-free, and it is small enough that people are surprised by it rather than hurt by it — but set something aside rather than finding out at filing.
Whole years, and January is where it splits. The tax half is worked out a year at a time, because a year holds only so much tax: a deployment longer than twelve months is counted as a full year plus what is left over, and the two answers are added. Where your deployment actually falls across January changes it a little — a tour split evenly across two returns takes more off the top of each and is worth up to a few per cent more than the figure here. This estimate takes the lower of those arrangements and is exact for a deployment inside one calendar year.
State tax is not in it. The exclusion is a federal rule. Most states with an income tax follow it, several exempt military pay entirely, and a few do neither — so the state half depends on your state of legal residence rather than on where you deployed. Nothing here withholds or refunds it.
Nor is anything that is not pay. Per diem and incidental expense allowances on the orders, a re-enlistment or assignment bonus, and any pay the LES shows for a different qualification are outside this figure. So is the Social Security and Medicare that keeps being withheld throughout: the combat zone excludes income tax, not FICA, and an LES that still shows those deductions is correct.
Outside a designated area. The tax exclusion is a list, not a description of hardship. A deployment somewhere that has not been designated a combat zone or qualified hazardous duty area is taxed exactly like a month at home, however far away it is and however long it lasts. The same is true of imminent danger pay, which runs off its own list.
Without dependents, there is no family separation allowance. FSA is payable only to a member with dependents, or to a member married to another service member. A single member with no dependents draws none of it at any length of separation, and no back-claim opens up later.
Under 31 days. A separation that ends at 29 days pays no FSA at all. The 30-day threshold is a condition on the whole entitlement rather than a waiting period, so passing it pays from the date you detached — and not passing it pays nothing.
The two statutory pays start themselves, mostly. Imminent danger pay follows the location on your orders and normally appears without a claim. Family separation does not: it needs a DD Form 1561, and a missing FSA line on an LES is almost always a form nobody filed rather than an entitlement nobody has.
The exclusion is applied by the pay system, not claimed on a return. Excluded pay is left off the wages your W-2 reports, so there is nothing to deduct at filing. Check the LES while you are still in theater instead: a month showing federal withholding that should not be there is fixed by finance, and it is far easier to fix in the same tax year.
The deadlines move while you are deployed. Filing and payment deadlines are extended for at least 180 days after you leave the zone, and longer where hospitalization follows. That is an extension of time to file, not a reason to wait: the refund the exclusion produces is money you are owed.
Less than the internet says, and more than the two allowance lines suggest. Imminent danger pay and family separation come to $475 a month between them; the combat zone tax exclusion is usually worth more than both, because it takes basic pay off the federal return entirely. An E-6 over 8 deploying for 9 months to a designated zone, with dependents at home and no hardship duty pay, is about $6,800.43 better off — roughly $755.60 a month, before anything deposited in the Savings Deposit Program. Your own figure turns on your grade, your years of service and your filing status, which is what the calculator above asks for.
Federal income tax, yes, and only in a designated combat zone or qualified hazardous duty area. For an enlisted member or a warrant officer every dollar of pay for a qualifying month is excluded — basic pay, imminent danger pay, hardship duty pay, a bonus signed in theater. A commissioned officer is capped at the senior enlisted member's basic pay plus the imminent danger pay payable to them, which below about O-5 never binds. Social Security and Medicare keep being withheld throughout: the exclusion is income tax only, so an LES still showing FICA is correct.
Yes, both, unchanged. BAH keeps paying at your permanent station's rate for the household you left there, and BAS keeps paying whether or not you are eating in a dining facility in theater. Neither is affected by the tax exclusion, because allowances were never taxable income to begin with — which is why a deployment adds less to a member whose pay is mostly allowances than the headline percentages suggest.
FSA-T, almost always. DoD FMR Vol 7A Ch. 27 subpara. 2.3.1.3 pays it for temporary duty away from your permanent station for more than 30 continuous days where your dependents do not live near the deployed location. FSA-R is the unaccompanied overseas tour and FSA-S is duty aboard a ship — the allowance is the same $250 a month whichever one applies, and para. 2.1 pays it only once even where you qualify under two. It is payable only to a member with dependents, and it needs a DD Form 1561 to be substantiated.
It counts as a whole month. The exclusion applies to pay for any month during any part of which you served in the designated area, so a member who arrives on the 28th has that entire month's pay excluded — and one who leaves on the 2nd has the same. Imminent danger pay works the same way. That is why this calculator counts whole months rather than days: there are no days in the rule to be precise about.
Up to the senior enlisted member's basic pay plus the imminent danger pay actually payable to that officer, for each qualifying month — DoD FMR Vol 7A Ch. 44 subpara. 2.2.1.2. It is a ceiling on the month's whole taxable pay rather than on the basic-pay line alone, so a bonus paid in theater competes with basic pay for the same room under it. This site applies the newest senior enlisted figure the FMR publishes, $10,758.00 a month effective 1 April 2025; the current one is higher, so a senior officer's real exclusion is slightly larger than the figure here.