District of Columbia Paystub Generator

Reading a District of Columbia pay stub, line by line

A Washington, DC pay stub has exactly one District line: income tax withholding. Unemployment insurance and Paid Family Leave are both funded entirely by the employer, and DC has no county, city, or school-district tax layered on top — the District is the local jurisdiction. Here is what each line means in 2026:

DC Income Tax ("DC State Tax", "DC W/H", "DC Withholding"). The District taxes wages in seven brackets from 4% to 10.75%, and the same schedule applies whether you file single, jointly, or as head of household: 4% on the first $10,000 of taxable income, 6% to $40,000, 6.5% to $60,000, 8.5% to $250,000, 9.25% to $500,000, 9.75% to $1,000,000, and 10.75% above that. The brackets are fixed in D.C. Code § 47-1806.03 and have not changed since tax year 2022. On your return you subtract a $16,100 standard deduction for 2026 (single or married filing separately; $24,150 head of household; $32,200 married filing jointly) — DC indexes its own $15,000 base to the Washington-area CPI, and for 2026 it lands on the federal figure. There is no personal exemption.

How the withheld amount is calculated. Your employer uses the allowances you claimed on Form D-4 and OTR's FR-230 withholding tables. The tables ignore the standard deduction entirely: payroll subtracts $4,150 per allowance and taxes the rest from the first dollar at 4%. That is why a single earner at $60,000 with one allowance sees about $124 withheld each biweekly check ($3,230 a year) against a real 2026 liability of $2,453.50 — roughly $777 comes back at filing. The $4,150 figure is from the last FR-230 booklet OTR published (2018); the first four brackets in that booklet match today's statute, so withholding is unaffected for wages under $250,000.

Nonresidents: no DC line at all. The District cannot tax people who live outside it, so a Maryland or Virginia commuter working in DC files Form D-4A, Certificate of Nonresidence, and pays only their home state. A DC resident working in Maryland or Virginia owes DC, not the work state. You are a DC resident if you are domiciled in the District or keep a home there for 183 or more days of the year.

What you will NOT see in 2026: an unemployment insurance deduction — D.C. Code § 51-103 says contributions "shall not be deducted in whole or in part from the wages of individuals"; a Paid Family Leave deduction — the 0.75% PFL tax is 100% employer-paid on every dollar of wages with no cap, and DOES states it "may not be deducted from a worker's paycheck"; a state disability insurance line (DC has none); or a separate local tax line.

Plus the federal lines on every US stub: federal income tax, Social Security (6.2% up to $184,500 in 2026), and Medicare (1.45%, plus 0.9% on wages over $200,000). From January 1, 2027: Social Security 6.2% up to $192,300.

District of Columbia paycheck facts — 2026

What you actually take home in District of Columbia (2026 estimates)

Estimated for a single filer taking the standard deduction, including federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and DC income tax (statutory brackets after the $16,100 standard deduction, no exemption). There is no local tax and no employee-paid program to add — DC income tax is the only District deduction:

Where the money goes at $60,000: DC income tax is $2,453.50 — 4.1% of gross — because the $16,100 deduction wipes out more than a quarter of your wages before the 4% bracket even starts. Federal income tax and FICA take the other 16%. Your stub withholds about $3,230 (the FR-230 method taxes from dollar one after a single $4,150 allowance), so roughly $777 comes back at filing.

Higher up the scale the brackets bite: a DC software developer at the median $136,880 pays about $8,666 in District tax, because everything above $60,000 of taxable income is taxed at 8.5%.

Methodology: 2026 federal brackets and $16,100 standard deduction (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32), FICA per SSA, D.C. Code § 47-1806.03 brackets after the $16,100 DC standard deduction printed in OTR's 2026 D-40ES worksheet (§ 47-1801.04); no personal exemption, no local tax, no employee-paid program deductions. Estimates only — your withholding depends on your W-4/D-4 allowances, credits, and pre-tax benefits.

What District of Columbia jobs pay (BLS, May 2025)

The District's median hourly wage across all occupations is $44.01 — 80% above the national median of $24.51 and the highest of any state-level BLS area. Even the tipped floor is high: a DC waiter at the median $47,850 earns more than a retail salesperson, and a full-time job at the $18.40 minimum wage grosses $38,272 — roughly the DC median retail wage.

District of Columbia's workforce in numbers

• 693,645 residents, civilian labor force of 401,900, unemployment 5.9% (Census 2025 estimate; BLS, July 2026 preliminary, down from 6.5% in February)
• 64,986 self-employed (nonemployer) businesses (Census, 2023) — about one for every 11 residents, and 2.7 times the number of businesses with employees
• 558,653 people on employer payrolls at 23,801 establishments, earning $56.8 billion a year — about $101,600 per employee (Census County Business Patterns, 2023)
• Mean annual wage: $111,010 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)

Washington, DC pay rules — the answers people actually need

Final paycheck: fired, next working day; quit, next payday or 7 days — whichever is earlier. D.C. Code § 32-1303 requires an employer that discharges you to pay everything owed "not later than the working day following such discharge" — a working day being any day other than a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday. If you resign, wages are due "upon the next regular payday or within 7 days from the date of quitting or resigning, whichever is earlier." Pay suspended by a labor dispute is due on the next regular payday. This is one of the fastest final-pay rules in the country.

Pay frequency: at least twice a month, on regular paydays the employer designates in advance (§ 32-1302). Administrative, executive, and professional employees may be paid once a month. The gap between the end of a pay period and payday can be no more than 10 working days.

Is a pay stub required? Yes. Under § 32-1008(b) every employer must hand you an itemized statement at the time of payment showing the date of payment, gross wages, each deduction from and addition to wages (tips on their own line), net wages, and the hours you worked in the period, together with your tip-declaration form if you are tipped. Beginning January 1, 2026 the statement must also list every source of pay beyond base wages and gratuities — service charges, commissions, and the like get their own line. Employers keep pay and precise daily time records for at least three years, and must give you written notice of your pay rate, overtime rate, and payday when you are hired.

Minimum wage: $17.95 until June 30, 2026, then $18.40 from July 1, 2026 for every employer regardless of size (§ 32-1003), indexed each July 1 to the Washington-area CPI and rounded to the nearest $0.05. The tipped cash wage moves from $10.00 to $10.30 on July 1, 2026 — 56% of the minimum — after D.C. Law 26-55 replaced Initiative 82's climb to full parity with a percentage ladder (60% in 2028, 65% in 2030, 70% in 2032, 75% in 2034). If your weekly tips plus the cash wage average less than the full minimum, the employer must pay the difference. Overtime is 1.5× after 40 hours in a week.

Commuters and reciprocity. Maryland and Virginia residents working in the District owe no DC income tax: file Form D-4A and DC withholding stops. DC residents working across the line owe DC on all their wages instead of the work state. Your DC withholding is reconciled on Form D-40, where the $16,100 standard deduction is applied.

Local taxes and minimum wages in DC (2026)

The District is a single city-level jurisdiction, so there is nothing local to add: no county or municipal income tax, no school-district tax, and no sub-jurisdiction minimum wage. The DC income tax on your stub is the whole District bite, and the $18.40 minimum wage (from July 1, 2026) applies to every employer of every size across all eight wards.

Do not confuse the minimum wage with DC's separate living-wage rate for District contractors — that rate applies only to government contracts. And on the tax side, what competitors sometimes label a DC "exemption" of $4,150 is only a withholding allowance inside the FR-230 tables; there is no personal exemption on the DC return.

A full-time job at $18.40 grosses $38,272 a year — after federal tax, FICA, and about $1,130 of DC income tax, that is roughly $31,801 in hand, or about $1,223 per biweekly check.

Take-home on $60,000 — DC vs. Maryland, Virginia, and the nearby states people compare it with

Only Maryland and Virginia physically border the District, so the table adds the nearby states DC workers most often weigh against it. At $60,000 the $16,100 deduction keeps DC's bite to about $2,454 — well under Maryland's combined state-and-county tax in a 3.20% county — but the 8.5% bracket that starts at $60,000 of taxable income means the gap closes quickly for higher earners.

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