Utah Paystub Generator

Reading an Utah pay stub, line by line

A Utah pay stub has exactly one state line — a flat 4.45% withholding with a small credit folded inside it. No local tax, no disability or paid-leave premium, no employee unemployment tax, anywhere in the state. Here is what each line means in 2026:

UT State Income Tax ("UT State Tax", "Utah SIT"). Utah taxes all income at a single flat 4.45% for tax year 2026 — SB 60 cut the rate from 4.50%, retroactive to January 1, 2026, the sixth cut in six years (4.95% in 2021). There is no Utah standard deduction and no personal exemption for you; instead the state gives you a Taxpayer Tax Credit (Utah Code 59-10-1018) worth 6% of your federal standard deduction — up to $966 for a single filer in 2026 — reduced by 1.3 cents for every dollar of Utah taxable income above $18,213 (the 2025 indexed threshold; 2026 not yet published), so it is gone by about $92,500. Your kids count toward Utah's exemption ($2,111 each, 2025 value); you and your spouse do not.

How the withholding on the stub is calculated (Publication 14, Schedule 7, effective June 1, 2026). Your employer multiplies Utah taxable wages by 4.45%, then subtracts a base allowance of $485 (single) or $970 (married) that shrinks by 1.3% of wages over $9,348 ($18,696 married) — biweekly, that is a $19 or $37 allowance. That withholding credit is much smaller than the real $966 credit and disappears by about $46,660 of wages, so single earners between roughly $20,000 and $92,000 are over-withheld and get the difference back on the TC-40. Stubs for pay periods before June 1, 2026 used the old 4.5% tables; that over-withholding is refunded at filing too.

There is no Utah W-4. Your federal Form W-4 is the only withholding form your Utah employer uses, and Utah ignores the allowances on it — Pub 14 says no subtraction is made for personal or other withholding allowances. Exempt employees (interstate-transportation workers, nonresident military spouses) write "Utah Only – Exempt" under box 4c of the federal W-4. Bonuses and commissions run through the same schedules as regular wages — Utah publishes no flat supplemental rate.

What you will NOT see in 2026: a city or county income tax (Salt Lake City, Provo, St. George — none, and boxes 18–20 of your W-2 stay blank); state disability insurance; a paid family leave premium; or an employee unemployment contribution. Unemployment insurance is employer-only on a $50,700 wage base in 2026 — 74% of Utah employers pay the minimum 0.1%, which is $50.70 per worker for the whole year, and none of it touches your check.

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).

Utah paycheck facts — 2026

What you actually take home in Utah (2026 estimates)

Estimated for a single filer with no dependents taking the standard deduction, including federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and Utah state tax at the statutory liability — flat 4.45% less the Taxpayer Tax Credit ($966 reduced by 1.3% of income over $18,213). Utah has no local tax and no employee-paid state programs, so no other lines are deducted:

Where the money goes at $60,000: Utah state tax is $2,247, or 3.7% of gross — 4.45% ($2,670) less a $423 credit. Your stub withholds the full $2,670 (about $103 biweekly) because the Pub 14 schedule's $485 allowance has already phased out, so roughly $423 comes back when you file the TC-40. Federal income tax and FICA take another 16%.

Dependents change the number: each qualifying child adds $2,111 (2025 value) to Utah's personal exemption, which is worth 6% — about $127 more credit per child before the phase-out. The credit itself is the only relief: there is no deduction to enlarge.

Methodology: 2026 federal brackets and $16,100 standard deduction (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32), FICA per SSA, Utah flat 4.45% (Utah Code 59-10-104 as amended by SB 60, 2026) less the Taxpayer Tax Credit of 6% × $16,100 phased out at 1.3% of income over $18,213 (59-10-1018; the threshold is the 2025 indexed value — the 2026 figure is published in the TC-40 instructions in early 2027). Estimates only — your withholding follows Pub 14 Schedule 7 and your federal W-4, and your liability depends on dependents, credits, and pre-tax benefits.

What Utah jobs pay (BLS, May 2025)

Utah's median hourly wage across all occupations is $24.09 — 1.7% under the national median of $24.51. Software developers are the state's largest high-wage group at 31,940 jobs, more than the 27,420 registered nurses, and a developer at the state median ($128,810) has already lost the entire Taxpayer Tax Credit — Utah simply takes 4.45% of everything. At the other end, Utah waiters earn a median $14.98 with tips on a $2.13 cash wage.

Utah's workforce in numbers

• 3.5 million residents, civilian labor force of 1.8 million, unemployment 3.6% (Census 2025 estimate; BLS, July 2026 preliminary)
• 304,287 self-employed (nonemployer) businesses (Census, 2023) — about one for every 12 residents, and 3.2 times the number of businesses with employees
• 1.6 million people on employer payrolls at 95,494 establishments, earning $96.4 billion a year (Census County Business Patterns, 2023)
• Mean annual wage: $66,290 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)

Utah pay rules — the answers people actually need

Final paycheck: within 24 hours if you are fired or laid off — one of the fastest deadlines in the country. Utah Code 34-28-5(1) says wages "become due immediately" when the employer ends the relationship, satisfied by hand delivery, initiating direct deposit within 24 hours, or a check postmarked no more than one day after separation. If you quit, your final wages — including any deposit the employer holds — are due on the next regular payday (34-28-5(2)). If wages stay unpaid after a written demand, they keep accruing at your regular rate for up to 60 days, but you must sue within 60 days of separation and there is no penalty without the written demand. The Labor Commission's Wage Claim Unit takes claims of $50 to $10,000 for wages earned within the past year.

Pay frequency: at least semimonthly, on paydays the employer designates in advance, and wages for a period must be paid within 10 days after the period closes (34-28-3(1)). If payday lands on a weekend or legal holiday, you are paid the preceding day. Employees on a yearly salary may be paid monthly, on or before the 7th of the following month. You can refuse direct deposit in writing — unless your employer deposited $250,000 or more in federal employment taxes last year and two-thirds of its staff already use it.

Is a pay stub required? Partly. Utah Code 34-28-3(4) requires that if any deduction is taken, the employer must furnish a statement showing the total amount of each deduction on every regular payday — so anyone with tax withheld gets an itemized deduction statement. A full pay statement — name, base rate, pay-period dates, hours worked if hourly, the amount and reason for every withholding (state and federal tax, Social Security, Medicare, court orders), and total paid — is mandatory only for employers licensed in the construction trades (34-28-3(5)). Every other Utah employer is free to give you a complete stub, and most do, but the law only guarantees the deductions list.

Minimum wage: $7.25, the federal rate, unchanged since July 24, 2009 (Utah Code 34-40-103; Admin. Code R610-1-3). Tipped employees may be paid a $2.13 cash wage as long as tips bring them to $7.25 (tips must reach $30 a month for the employer to take the credit). Minors under 18 may be paid $4.25 for their first 90 days, then $7.25. Utah's rate cannot exceed the federal minimum by statute, so it moves only when Congress moves the FLSA.

Deductions need a legal basis. An employer may withhold from wages only when required by court order or law, when you have expressly authorized it in writing, when a hearing officer allows it, or for auto-enroll retirement contributions with an opt-out (34-28-3(6)–(8)). Anything else on your stub that you did not sign for is a wage claim.

Local taxes and city minimum wages in Utah: none today

Utah is one of the simplest states in the country to read a pay stub in. No city or county levies an income tax — the Tax Commission publishes one statewide withholding schedule (Pub 14) and describes the tax as a single rate for all income levels. Salt Lake City, West Valley City, Provo, and St. George have no local withholding line, and boxes 18–20 of a Utah W-2 stay blank. That is current practice rather than a legal guarantee: we found no Utah statute that expressly bars a city or county from levying an income tax, only the absence of any that does.

Cities cannot raise the minimum wage either. Utah Code 34-40-106(1) says a city, town, or county "may not establish, mandate, or require a minimum wage that exceeds the federal minimum wage" — so Salt Lake City is legally stuck at $7.25 no matter what its council votes. A full-time job at the state floor grosses $15,080 a year; the state's median wage of $24.09 an hour is more than three times that, which is why the minimum matters mostly to tipped and first-90-day workers.

The only local-looking line you might ever see is an employer's own unemployment tax on its side of the ledger — 0.1% to a $50,700 base for stable employers in 2026 — and that never reaches an employee stub.

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

Utah sits in the middle of its neighborhood: at $60,000 a single filer's $2,247 Utah liability is about $2,247 more than Nevada or Wyoming, which have no income tax at all, while the Taxpayer Tax Credit keeps the effective rate at 3.7% of gross — well under the 4.45% headline that most calculators quote. The credit is the whole difference: without it Utah would take $2,670.

(Wyoming and New Mexico figures are directional estimates pending those pages' full data workup.)

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