Paystub Deductions: Taxes, Benefits and Garnishments

Paystub deductions are every amount taken out of gross pay before the net payment is issued. They fall into two groups: required deductions such as federal and state income tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare and court-ordered garnishments, and voluntary deductions the employee elected, such as health premiums, retirement contributions or charitable gifts.

That split tells you who controls each line. An employee can usually change a benefit election at open enrollment or after a qualifying life event, but cannot opt out of Medicare tax or a child support order. The sections below walk through each family of deductions, work one stub from gross to net with made-up figures, and explain what each line should be compared against. If you only need the relationship between the top and bottom numbers, the guide to gross pay vs net pay covers that on its own.

What belongs in the deductions section

A deduction is money withheld from wages and sent somewhere else: to the IRS, a state revenue agency, an insurance carrier, a retirement plan, a support enforcement agency or a charity. The employee never sees it in the deposit, but it is still part of their pay.

Three kinds of lines often sit near the deductions column without being deductions:

• Employer contributions. A line such as "ER 401(k) match" or "Employer medical" is money the employer pays on top of wages. Some stubs print it for information, and it should never reduce net pay.
• Reimbursements. Mileage or equipment repayments are added back after deductions, so they raise the deposit instead of shrinking it.
• Taxable wage subtotals. "Federal taxable wages" or "FICA wages" are bases used to figure a tax, not amounts taken out.

A simple test works for all three. If a line reduces the net payment, it is a deduction; if it does not, it is a memo, a subtotal or an employer cost.

Four families of paystub deductions

Nearly every deduction line fits one of four families. The table shows typical labels, where the requirement comes from, and whether the employee can change it.

The first two families are the mandatory deductions. The last two are voluntary in the sense that they exist because someone signed up, even when a union contract makes dues a condition of the job.

Mandatory deductions: taxes and orders

Federal income tax withholding

Federal income tax withholding, often shortened to FIT or FWT, is an installment toward the employee's annual income tax. The employer works it out from the employee's Form W-4 and the withholding methods in IRS Publication 15-T, which the IRS reissues every year. Because withholding is an estimate, a single stub says nothing final about what the employee will owe when the return is filed.

Social Security and Medicare

Together these two lines are FICA taxes. For 2026, IRS Publication 15 sets the employee share of Social Security at 6.2% of wages up to a wage base of $184,500, which caps the 2026 employee Social Security deduction at $11,439.00. Medicare is 1.45% of all wages with no cap. Employers also withhold an extra 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on an employee's wages above $200,000 in the calendar year.

Social Security may appear as OASDI (Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance), and Medicare as MED or HI. When year-to-date Social Security wages reach the wage base, the Social Security line drops to zero for the rest of that year while Medicare keeps going.

State and local income taxes

State income tax withholding, labeled SIT or State WH, shows up in most states, while states with no tax on wages leave it off entirely. Some cities, counties and school districts add their own line on top. A handful of states, including New Jersey, New York and Washington, also fund disability or paid family leave programs through employee payroll deductions, with rates the state agency resets each year. The guide to local tax labels on paystubs lists the local codes worth checking.

Garnishments and support orders

A wage garnishment is a deduction the employer must take because a court or agency ordered it. Federal law limits how much can go. Department of Labor Fact Sheet #30 (revised December 2024) explains that under Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act, an ordinary garnishment cannot exceed the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount by which weekly disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage.

Support orders have higher ceilings. The same fact sheet allows up to 50% of disposable earnings when the employee supports another spouse or child, or 60% when they do not, plus another 5% when payments are more than 12 weeks behind. The limits do not apply to federal or state tax debts or to certain bankruptcy court orders.

Disposable earnings are what remains after legally required deductions. A health premium or union dues the employee chose therefore do not lower the base that the percentage applies to.

Illustrative example (made-up figures): an employee earns $900.00 in one week with no pre-tax benefit deductions. The assumed required deductions are $70.00 federal income tax, $55.80 Social Security (6.2%), $13.05 Medicare (1.45%) and $29.15 state income tax, for a total of $168.00.

• Disposable earnings: $900.00 − $168.00 = $732.00
• 25% of disposable earnings: $732.00 × 0.25 = $183.00
• Disposable earnings above 30 × $7.25, which is $217.50: $732.00 − $217.50 = $514.50
• Most an ordinary creditor garnishment could take that week: the smaller figure, $183.00

Adding a $40.00 weekly dental premium to this stub would not change the $183.00 result, because the premium is voluntary.

Voluntary deductions: what the employee elected

Health, dental and vision premiums

Premiums for employer health coverage usually come out of each paycheck in equal amounts. When the plan runs them through a Section 125 cafeteria plan, IRS Publication 15-B (2026) treats qualifying accident and health benefits as exempt from federal income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare. That is why these lines often carry a "Pre-tax" or "125" tag.

Retirement contributions

A traditional 401(k) deferral comes out before federal income tax withholding is figured, but the IRS still counts it as wages for Social Security and Medicare. A Roth 401(k) deferral comes out after tax. Either type can be a percentage of pay or a flat dollar amount, and the plan document decides whether bonuses and overtime count toward the percentage.

Health savings and flexible spending accounts

HSA and FSA elections are normally an annual figure spread across the year's pay dates. An employee who elects $1,300 for a year of 26 biweekly paychecks will see $50.00 on each stub. If they join mid-year, the same annual election is spread over fewer paychecks, so the per-stub amount is higher.

Other authorized deductions

Union dues, parking, charitable giving, uniform purchases and repayments of a payroll advance land in this family. Whether an employer may take a particular item, and whether it needs written consent first, is a matter of state wage-payment law. When several small items are rolled into one line, the result is the familiar catch-all total explained in what "other deductions" means.

Where the mandatory-versus-voluntary line blurs

Three situations regularly confuse the split:

• Union dues under a collective bargaining agreement can be a condition of the job, yet they come from an agreement rather than a statute.
• Automatic retirement enrollment starts a 401(k) deduction without the employee doing anything, although plans with automatic enrollment generally let the employee opt out or change the rate.
• State disability or paid leave premiums read like an insurance benefit but are set by state law, so they belong with taxes.

A quick way to sort a doubtful line: imagine the employee sends payroll a written request to stop it. If the honest answer is that the law or an order requires the deduction anyway, treat it as mandatory.

Deduction codes and abbreviations

Payroll systems print short codes to fit narrow columns. These are the ones most often seen in the deductions block:

Codes are not standardized, so the same letters can mean different things at two employers. A deduction code list from payroll or the benefits portal settles any doubt.

Pre-tax or after-tax: why the sequence matters

Payroll takes pre-tax deductions first, figures taxes on what is left, and then takes after-tax deductions. Garnishments are worked out last, from disposable earnings. That sequence is why two deductions of the same size can leave different amounts in the deposit. The comparison with side-by-side numbers is in pre-tax vs post-tax deductions.

One biweekly stub from gross pay to net pay

Illustrative example (made-up figures): a salaried employee earns $2,400.00 gross every two weeks. They defer 5% into a traditional 401(k) and pay a $95.00 medical premium through a cafeteria plan. After tax, they buy $6.00 of supplemental life insurance and pledge $10.00 to a workplace charity. The federal and state income tax amounts are assumptions, not results from the IRS or state tables.

The tax bases differ for a reason. Federal taxable wages exclude both the 401(k) deferral and the medical premium: $2,400.00 − $120.00 − $95.00 = $2,185.00. Social Security and Medicare wages exclude only the medical premium, $2,400.00 − $95.00 = $2,305.00, because a traditional 401(k) deferral still counts for FICA.

Of the $677.33 taken out, $441.33 went to taxes and $236.00 to things the employee chose. The tax share is $190.00 + $142.91 + $33.42 + $80.00, and the elective share is $120.00 + $95.00 + $6.00 + $10.00. Splitting a stub this way is a fast answer to the question of how much of a paycheck the employee could change by revisiting their elections.

Employer costs that never appear as deductions

Some payroll taxes are paid by the employer and cost the employee nothing. IRS Publication 15 (2026) sets Social Security at 6.2% each for the employer and the employee, and Medicare at 1.45% each, so the employer matches the employee's FICA lines out of its own funds. On the stub above, that match is another $142.91 and $33.42, or $176.33 in total, on top of the $2,400.00 gross.

Federal unemployment tax is paid by employers rather than withheld from wages. Some stubs print these amounts in an "Employer taxes" or "ER" box. They are useful for understanding the full cost of a job, but they should never be subtracted from the employee's gross pay, and a stub that does subtract them has a layout or setup problem.

Reading the YTD column beside each deduction

Each deduction normally has a current amount and a year-to-date amount. The YTD figure should equal the previous stub's YTD plus this period's amount. If the employee in the example has received 10 identical stubs this year, their YTD medical line should read $950.00 and their YTD Social Security line $1,429.10.

Two patterns deserve a question. One is a YTD deduction that grows by a different amount than the current column shows. The other is a YTD line that vanishes mid-year while the deduction itself is still being taken. For how cumulative totals build across the year, see what YTD means on a paystub.

Deductions also move between stubs for ordinary reasons: overtime raises every percentage-based line, Social Security stops at the wage base, and open enrollment resets premiums in January. Those patterns, and how to check them without redoing payroll, are covered in why deductions change between pay periods.

Questions to ask about any deduction line

1. What is it? The label should name the item rather than show only a code such as DED04.
2. Who receives the money: a tax agency, a plan, an insurer, a support agency or a charity?
3. What authorizes it: a law, a court order, a benefit election or a signed form?
4. Is it taken before or after tax?
5. Does the current amount match the election, the rate or the order?
6. Does the YTD amount roll forward correctly from the previous stub?
7. Does the same item carry the same label every period?

When the first three answers cannot be found on the stub or in the benefits portal, payroll or HR can usually supply the deduction code list.

Why a contractor's payment record has no deductions block

Everything above applies to employees paid through payroll. An independent contractor is normally paid the full invoiced amount with no income tax, Social Security or Medicare withheld, because the contractor handles their own taxes. A contractor's payment summary therefore tends to show the amount billed, any agreed fees and the amount paid, rather than a stack of tax lines. If a record for a contractor shows FICA deductions, it is worth checking whether the worker's status or the record's layout is wrong.

Federal, state and local rules behind these lines

Federal rules set the baseline. The IRS governs income tax withholding and FICA, and the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division enforces the federal garnishment limits. States add their own layer: the state revenue department sets state withholding, the state labor department decides which deductions need written consent, and some states cap garnishments below the federal limit. When a line depends on where the employee works, check that state agency's website or ask the employer's payroll provider.

Deductions on a paystub you create yourself

When you prepare a paystub-style record, every deduction amount has to come from a real source: a payroll report, a benefit confirmation, a court order or a signed authorization. On PayStubGo's online paystub generator, the form has fields for federal income tax, state tax, Social Security, Medicare and local tax, plus custom deduction rows that each take a label and an amount. Custom rows are added into total deductions before net pay appears in the preview, so a duplicated or mislabeled row changes the result. If you need several stubs with the same deduction set, the advanced paystub builder lets you create them together and switch templates while you check each one.

PayStubGo formats the figures you enter into a paystub-style PDF; it does not run payroll, calculate authoritative withholding or verify any amount. Questions about a specific garnishment order, benefit plan or withholding figure belong with the employer's payroll team, the agency named on the order, or a tax professional.