Pay stub deductions explained

Every line between your gross and your net belongs to one of three families, and the family decides the rules. Some deductions your employer must take and neither of you has a choice. Some a court or an agency imposed, with a cap on how deep it can go. The rest require your permission — and in several states there are things you cannot give permission for even if you want to.

This is about what may legally come out and how much. If you want the line-by-line reading of a finished stub, how to read a pay stub does that instead.

Family one: the ones nobody chooses

Federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax where your state has one, and local tax where your city or school district levies one. Your W-4 shapes the federal figure; nothing you sign removes it.

Two features of this family matter for the rest of the article. These deductions have no cap — they are not restricted by the rules below, and there is no minimum-wage floor protecting you from them. And they come out of a base that the other families have already modified, which is why order of operations turns out to matter.

Family two: the ones a court or agency imposed

Wage garnishment for a consumer debt, child support, alimony, tax levies, student loan administrative wage garnishment. You did not agree to these and cannot decline them, but unlike taxes, most of them are capped.

The consumer debt cap

The Consumer Credit Protection Act limits what an ordinary garnishment can reach in any workweek to the lesser of two figures:

25% of your disposable earnings for the week, or
the amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage.

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009, so that second figure is 30 × $7.25 = $217.50 a week. Disposable earnings here means what is left after legally required deductions — the family-one taxes — not after your health premium or your 401(k).

Worked three ways, for a weekly pay period:

Disposable earnings	25% of it	Amount over $217.50	Maximum garnishable
$200.00	$50.00	$0	Nothing
$250.00	$62.50	$32.50	$32.50
$400.00	$100.00	$182.50	$100.00

The floor is the point. If your disposable earnings for the week are at or under 30 times the minimum wage, an ordinary garnishment may take nothing at all.

Where the cap does not apply

The Act's restrictions do not reach a debt due for any state or federal tax, or a Chapter XIII bankruptcy order. A tax levy is limited by its own rules, not by the 25% figure, which is why a levy can feel so much heavier than a credit card judgment.

Support orders get their own, higher limits

For alimony or child support the ceiling is:

50% of disposable earnings if you are supporting another spouse or dependent child, or
60% if you are not,
plus 5 points in either case — so 55% or 65% — to the extent the earnings are subject to an order covering a period more than twelve weeks before the current workweek.

That last clause is the arrears rule, and it is where people are surprised: falling behind does not merely add a second order, it raises the ceiling on the existing one.

When two garnishments arrive at once, federal law does not sort out who goes first. Priority comes from state law, and support orders generally outrank consumer debts.

Family three: the ones you agreed to

Health, dental and vision premiums, 401(k) or 403(b) contributions, HSA and FSA, life insurance, union dues, parking, charitable giving, repayment of a genuine advance.

The general shape across states is that a deduction in this family needs your authorization, usually in writing, and usually specific rather than blanket. Idaho states the rule in a way that leaves no gaps: no employer may withhold or divert any portion of wages unless required or empowered by state or federal law, or holding a written authorization from the employee for a lawful purpose. There is no residual category for deductions the employer considers reasonable.

The floor underneath all of it

Federal wage regulation requires that wages be paid "free and clear" — finally and unconditionally. A deduction that functions as a kickback to the employer or for the employer's benefit breaks that requirement in any workweek where it cuts into the minimum wage or the overtime owed.

The regulation's own example is tools of the trade: if the employer requires you to supply tools used in or specifically required for its work, and the cost of them cuts into your minimum or overtime wages that week, that is a violation. The same logic reaches uniforms the employer requires and equipment it makes you buy.

This is a floor, not a prohibition. Your employer may often charge for these things — it may not charge in a way that pushes that week's pay below the minimum.

Things you cannot authorise in some states

A handful of states go past "needs consent" to "not allowed, consent or no consent," and the list is remarkably consistent about which items:

Hawaii names six that cannot be authorised at all: fines, cash shortages in a till two or more people use, breakage penalties, losses from dishonoured cheques the employee had discretion to accept, losses from faulty workmanship or damaged, lost or stolen property unless the employee wilfully disregarded the employer's interest, and the cost of a required medical examination.
Maine allows recovery of a genuine loan, debt or advance, then defines debt as a benefit to the employee and rules out the usual candidates by name: cash shortages, inventory shortages, dishonoured cheques and cards, damage to the employer's property, and merchandise a customer bought.
Alaska bars deductions for cash register shortages and lost, missing or stolen property unless the employee admits in writing to taking the specific amount or item; breakage and damage need willful conduct plus a written acknowledgement.
Arkansas approaches the same list through the wage floor: deductions for spoilage, breakage, shortages, and fines for lateness or misconduct may not take an employee below the minimum wage.

The pattern to take away: a shortfall in the till, a broken plate, a customer who walked out. Those are business losses, and most states that address the question at all decline to let an employer move them onto the employee's stub.

Why the order matters

Deductions do not all come out of the same base, and the sequence changes what you owe.

Pre-tax deductions are subtracted before tax is computed — but not before every tax. A traditional 401(k) deferral reduces the wages your income tax is figured on and does not reduce your Social Security and Medicare base. Section 125 health premiums reduce both. That asymmetry is why the Medicare wages on your W-2 are usually higher than your federal taxable wages.

Taxes come next, on whatever base survived.

Post-tax deductions come out of the remainder: garnishments, union dues, Roth contributions.

One practical consequence is that the disposable earnings a garnishment is measured against sit in the middle of that stack. They are computed after taxes and not after your voluntary deductions — so increasing your 401(k) contribution does not shrink what a garnishment can reach.

Checking your own

Three things worth confirming on any stub with an unfamiliar line:

Every deduction says what it is for. Ohio's statute asks for the amount and purpose of each addition and deduction. "Misc — $84.00" is not an itemization, and it is where most wage complaints start.
You authorised the family-three ones. If there is a deduction you do not recognise and never signed for, that is the question to ask payroll first.
The garnishment respects the cap. Take your gross, subtract taxes only, and run the two-figure test above. Payroll systems get this wrong most often when a pay period is not a week — the floor has to be converted to the actual period, not applied as though it were weekly.

If a deduction is wrong, ask payroll before anything else; most of these are configuration, not intent. Where that fails, your state's requirements page sets out the local remedy — the right to demand records, the deadline the employer has to meet, and the penalty for missing it all vary by state.

The generator applies the 2026 federal, FICA and state withholding tables and itemises each deduction separately, which makes it a reasonable way to check what a figure should have been before you raise it.