IRS defines nannies as hourly employees do you most pay hourly. You can’t possibly know how much they will take home exactly and you can only afford what you can afford.

To get $18-20 net, nanny likely needs ~$22-28/hr, but that should be on her to figure out by looking at tax calculators or estimating from previous income/taxes. You haven’t given much info for anyone to say whether $22-28 is a reasonable rate for your situation, but in a high COL area it is not uncommon to pay that for a quality nanny.
However, it is unusual for professional nannies to ask for a net rate... maybe if these are recent college grads who nannied part time in college or babysat for many families and got paid mostly in cash, but getting a request for a net rate would make me feel the nanny is not very mature or not very experienced.
Either way, you do not want to get into netting out pay as it sets you up for potential conflicts with your nanny at tax season. If she underestimated her withholdings, got married and started filing jointly, inherited some property or whatever and ended up owing more taxes than expected, you don’t want to be getting into an awkward discussion about whether you should have any responsibility for that. Gross rate only!

I agree with all of the above. You speak in terms of gross wage and they figure out their own taxes. Additionally, nannies are not salaried. I work 45 hours, 5 being OT. I am paid for those hours every week, whether worked or not. That is my base pay (salary) for the hours I’ve guaranteed to my employers. Any additional hours worked out side of my regular hours are added to my checks.

Quote a gross rate and then send them to a nanny tax calculator (https://secure.gtm.com/Household/nanny-tax-calculator.aspx) that will help them determine their take-home.

Gross rate only. They can fill out a sample w4 themselves and figure out what the take home will be.

Just advertise with your gross rate.

Gross hourly wage, of course.

I live in Los Angeles and our nanny is paid $28 an hour before taxes. I understand hourly is less in DC but our taxes are higher. She told me she nets about $21.50 an hour.

Always talk in gross numbers.

Any good nanny is bright enough to do a simple calculation on how much her own take-home will be. How would you know what her deductions are?

You are not interviewing good nannies, OP.

- a nanny

Any professional nanny has a set rate that they will give you. If they want to take home at least $20/hr after taxes then they will quote you around at least $22. A professional nanny isn’t going to say I want to bring home $18-$20 after taxes. I would look at other nanny’s who know exactly what they want to make. These nanny’s you mention don’t sound so great.

For those who pay on the books, did you agree on a weekly salary/hour rate and then withhold taxes from that, or do you pay the taxes so it nets out to the agreed upon rate?

We have interviewed a couple of great nannies but they all want to be paid on the books, and are requesting to net $18-20 per hour after taxes. When we do the math that is a lot more than we were expecting to pay once the taxes are added on top.

Just trying to see what is standard here.