Massachusetts Paystub Generator

Reading a Massachusetts pay stub, line by line

A Massachusetts pay stub has one flat state tax line, one employee-paid program line — and, for a very few people, a 9% withholding tier most workers will never touch. Here is what each line means in 2026:

MA State Income Tax ("MA SIT", "Mass. Withholding"). Massachusetts taxes wages at a flat 5.00%. Withholding follows DOR's Circular M: your employer subtracts an exemption amount based on Form M-4 — $4,400 a year for one exemption ($1,000 per exemption plus a $3,400 base), $4,400 more for a spouse claimed as "4" on line 2, and $1,000 per dependent — and also knocks off your Social Security and Medicare contributions up to $2,000 a year before applying the 5%. No M-4 on file means zero exemptions. Full-time students earning $8,000 or less can claim no withholding at all.

The 4% surtax ("Fair Share" / millionaires tax). Taxable income above $1,107,750 in 2026 is taxed at 9% (5% + 4%), and the surtax does flow into withholding: Circular M tells employers to withhold 9% on the annualized portion of regular wages above the threshold, with a matching rule for bonuses. For more than 99% of Massachusetts workers the stub shows a plain 5%.

MA PFML (Paid Family and Medical Leave). The only state program deduction on a Massachusetts stub. The 2026 program rate is 0.88% of wages, of which the employee pays at most 0.46% — 0.18% for family leave and 0.28% for medical leave — on wages up to the Social Security cap of $184,500 (maximum about $849 a year). Employers with 25 or more covered workers pay the remaining 0.42% medical share; smaller employers remit only your 0.46%. It funds up to 26 weeks of combined leave per year, with a maximum weekly benefit of $1,230.39 in 2026. From January 1, 2027 the employer share shifts toward family leave; the 2027 rate is due by October 1, 2026.

What you will NOT see: a city or town income tax (none in Massachusetts — local option excises cover hotel rooms, meals, and marijuana only), state disability insurance, an employee unemployment contribution (UI and the employer medical assistance contribution are employer-only), or Sunday/holiday premium pay lines for retail workers (eliminated January 1, 2023).

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).

Massachusetts paycheck facts — 2026

What you actually take home in Massachusetts (2026 estimates)

Estimated for a single filer taking the standard deduction, including federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Massachusetts income tax (5% after one $4,400 exemption and the $2,000 FICA deduction), and the employee share of MA PFML:

Where the money goes at $60,000: Massachusetts income tax $2,680 (4.5% of gross) plus PFML $276 — about $2,956, or 4.9% of gross. Federal income tax and FICA take the other 16%. A software developer at the state median ($165,210) pays about $8,700 more in PFML and state tax than the same salary in New Hampshire, which has no wage tax.

The surtax in practice: at $1.2 million of wages, the 9% tier applies only to the top $92,250 — an extra $3,690 for the year. Below $1,107,750 it changes nothing.

Methodology: 2026 federal brackets and $16,100 standard deduction (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32), FICA per SSA, Massachusetts flat 5.00% (M.G.L. c.62 §4) after the $4,400 one-exemption amount and the $2,000 FICA deduction (Circular M, rev. 12/25), MA PFML employee share 0.46% on wages to $184,500 (Department of Family and Medical Leave). Estimates only — your withholding depends on your W-4/M-4 exemptions, credits, and pre-tax benefits.

What Massachusetts jobs pay (BLS, May 2025)

Massachusetts's median hourly wage across all occupations is $30.57 — the highest of any state on this site, and behind only the District of Columbia's $44.01 across all 40 pages here, at 25% above the national median of $24.51. An elementary school teacher's $94,000 median annual wage is $16,000 more than New Jersey's and $39,000 more than North Carolina's.

Massachusetts's workforce in numbers

• 7.2 million residents, civilian labor force of 3.9 million, unemployment 4.4% (Census 2025 estimate; BLS, July 2026 preliminary)
• 633,439 self-employed (nonemployer) businesses (Census, 2023) — about one for every 11 residents; the self-employed can opt in to PFML through MassTaxConnect
• 3.5 million people on employer payrolls at 183,767 establishments, earning $302 billion a year (Census County Business Patterns, 2023)
• Mean annual wage: $85,610; median household income $103,960 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; Census ACS 2020–2024)

Massachusetts pay rules — the answers people actually need

Final paycheck: fired means paid in full the same day. M.G.L. c.149 §148 requires an employee "discharged from such employment" to be "paid in full on the day of his discharge" — including earned tips, earned vacation, and definitely-determined commissions. If you quit, final pay is due on the next regular payday, or the following Saturday if there is no regular payday. Massachusetts is one of the strictest states on this point, and the penalty is severe: mandatory treble damages plus attorneys' fees for any Wage Act violation (c.149 §150), enforced by the Attorney General's Fair Labor Division.

Pay frequency: hourly workers must be paid weekly or biweekly. The deadline after the pay period ends depends on the week: within six days if you worked five or six days, within seven days if you worked one to four days or all seven. Salaried employees may be paid semimonthly, and monthly at the employee's election — a rule we are stating from memory, because the Massachusetts legislature's site was unreachable and the Attorney General's guide covers only hourly workers. Read M.G.L. c.149 §148 before relying on it. Employers may require direct deposit but cannot choose your bank or charge you to access your pay.

Is a pay stub required? Yes — a "suitable pay slip, check stub or envelope" with every payment, showing the employer's and worker's names, the date of payment, the number of hours worked, the hourly rate, and all deductions or increases for the period. Employers may not charge for stubs, and electronic stubs are allowed only if you can print them for free. Workers may inspect their own payroll records (c.151 §15). A salaried stub with no hours line can still be non-compliant for non-exempt staff.

Minimum wage is stuck at $15.00. The 2018 "grand bargain" reached $15 on January 1, 2023 and scheduled nothing further; a Senate bill to reach $20 by 2030 is pending. A search index of the Secretary of the Commonwealth's news page lists nine questions on the November 3, 2026 ballot, none of them on wages — the Secretary's site blocks automated access, so we could not read that page directly, and you should check the certified ballot yourself. The tipped service rate is $6.75, with the employer making up any shortfall to $15.

Minimum wage and the PFML rate — what changes and what doesn't (2026)

Massachusetts has one statewide minimum wage and no local overrides — Boston, Cambridge, and Worcester all pay the same $15.00. What does move every year is the PFML contribution rate, reset each October for the following January:

Agricultural workers have a separate $8.00 minimum, and the state floor can never fall below 50 cents above the federal rate. A full-time minimum-wage worker grosses $31,200 and nets about $26,300 after federal tax, FICA, state tax, and PFML.

How Massachusetts compares with its neighbors (take-home on $60,000, 2026 est.)

The New Hampshire border is worth about $2,950 a year to a $60,000 earner — which is why so many Massachusetts employers in Lowell and Haverhill draw commuters from Nashua. It only works one way: New Hampshire residents working in Massachusetts owe Massachusetts tax on those wages, while Massachusetts residents working in New Hampshire still owe Massachusetts tax on everything.

(New Hampshire and Rhode Island figures are directional estimates pending those pages' full data workup.)

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