The header block: who, when, and how you are paid
The top of the stub identifies the check before a single dollar appears: your name and address, your employer, the pay period (the dates you are being paid for), and the pay date (when the money actually lands). The pay period and pay date are different things, and mixing them up is the most common reason a stub "looks wrong": most employers pay in arrears, so a check dated July 15 often covers work through June 30 or July 7.
The header usually also shows your employee ID, your federal filing status and W-4 elections, your state of employment, and your pay frequency. Frequency drives everything downstream:
- Weekly: 52 checks per year.
- Biweekly: 26 checks (every other week; two months a year contain three checks).
- Semi-monthly: 24 checks (typically the 15th and the last day of the month).
- Monthly: 12 checks.
Verify three things in the header on every new job or after any HR change: filing status, state, and pay frequency. Each one silently changes your withholding if it is wrong.
Gross pay: regular, overtime, and bonus
Gross pay is everything you earned this period before anything is taken out. Salaried employees usually see one "Regular" line: annual salary divided by the number of pay periods. Hourly employees see hours multiplied by rate, and the earnings block can carry several lines:
- Regular: base hours at your base rate.
- Overtime: hours over 40 in a workweek at 1.5x your regular rate under federal law (some states, like California, add daily overtime). Check the rate printed on the line, not just the total; a common payroll error is paying overtime at 1.0x. Our overtime pay calculator shows what the line should be.
- Bonus or commission: usually listed separately because supplemental wages are often withheld at a flat federal rate rather than your W-4 rate.
- PTO, holiday, sick: paid at your regular rate but tracked on their own lines so leave balances reconcile.
- Imputed income: the taxable value of non-cash benefits (group life insurance over $50,000, some gym or tuition perks). It raises your taxable wages without adding cash to the check.
Everything below this block is subtraction. If gross is wrong, every later line is wrong too, so check it first.
Pre-tax deductions: money out before taxes are computed
Pre-tax deductions come out of gross pay before taxes are calculated, which is why they cost you less in take-home pay than their face value. The critical nuance: different pre-tax deductions skip different taxes.
| Deduction | Skips federal income tax? | Skips FICA (Social Security + Medicare)? |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional 401(k) / 403(b) | Yes | No |
| HSA (through payroll) | Yes | Yes |
| Health / dental / vision premiums (Section 125) | Yes | Yes |
| FSA (health or dependent care) | Yes | Yes |
| Commuter benefits | Yes | Yes |
This is why your stub shows two different wage bases. "Federal taxable wages" equals gross minus all pre-tax deductions. "Social Security wages" and "Medicare wages" equal gross minus only the FICA-exempt ones, so your 401(k) deferral is still inside them. A traditional 401(k) contribution (up to $24,500 in 2026) reduces the federal income tax line but not the Social Security or Medicare lines. An HSA contribution through payroll reduces all three, which is why the 401(k) calculator and HSA math give slightly different per-dollar savings.
Most stubs print both the deduction amount and, for percentage-based deferrals, the election (for example "401K 6%"). If your election and the printed percentage disagree, payroll has stale data.
Taxes withheld: the four (or five) lines that shrink the check
The tax block is where most of the money goes, and each line is computed on a different wage base at a different rate:
- Federal income tax withholding: an estimate of your annual federal tax, spread across the year. It is driven by your W-4 (filing status, dependents, extra withholding) and your federal taxable wages for the period. It is the only tax line you can directly tune: file a new W-4 and it changes on the next check.
- Social Security (often "OASDI" or "FICA-SS"): a flat 6.2% of Social Security wages, but only up to the annual wage base of $184,500 in 2026. Earn more than that and the line disappears late in the year, which is why high earners get a visible raise in the fall.
- Medicare ("FICA-Med"): 1.45% of Medicare wages with no cap, plus an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% withheld on wages above $200,000 regardless of filing status.
- State income tax: present in 41 states plus DC; nine states (including Texas, Florida, and Washington) withhold nothing. Computed from your state withholding certificate.
- Local taxes: some cities and counties (New York City, most of Ohio and Pennsylvania) add their own line, and a few states add small items like state disability insurance (California SDI) or paid family leave premiums.
Remember that federal income tax withholding is a prepayment, not the final bill; the return you file settles the difference. FICA, by contrast, is exact: flat rates on defined wages, so those lines should always be verifiable to the penny. You can rebuild the whole block for your own numbers with the paycheck calculator.
Post-tax deductions: money out after taxes
Post-tax deductions come out after every tax line has been computed, so they reduce net pay dollar for dollar with no tax benefit on the way in. Common lines:
- Roth 401(k): the same paycheck deferral as a traditional 401(k), but taxed now so qualified withdrawals are tax-free later. It appears below the tax block, and your taxable wages are not reduced by it.
- Wage garnishments: court-ordered child support, tax levies, or creditor garnishments. Federal law caps most creditor garnishments at 25% of disposable earnings; the stub should show the order reference.
- After-tax insurance: supplemental life, disability buy-up, pet insurance, and similar voluntary coverage. Disability premiums paid after tax have a real upside: the benefit is tax-free if you ever claim it.
- Other: union dues, charitable payroll giving, stock purchase plan (ESPP) contributions, repayment of a payroll advance.
A quick sanity rule: if a deduction is supposed to lower your taxes and it appears below the tax lines, it is being processed post-tax by mistake. That exact mix-up (traditional 401(k) coded as Roth, or vice versa) is worth catching in the first pay period, not at tax time.
Employer contributions: shown on the stub, not taken from you
Many stubs include a block labeled "Employer paid benefits" or "Company contributions". Nothing in it is deducted from your pay; it is information about what your employer spends on top of your wages:
- Employer FICA match: your employer pays the same 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare that you do, separately from your withholding.
- 401(k) match: the employer deposit that follows your deferral (for example 50% of the first 6% you contribute). This is the line to watch: if you are contributing and the match line reads $0, escalate it the same week.
- Employer share of health premiums: typically 70 to 85% of the true cost of coverage; your $120 deduction may sit next to a $600 employer line.
- HSA employer seed, life and disability premiums, unemployment insurance (FUTA/SUTA).
This block is the honest answer to "what is my total compensation": salary plus everything listed here. It is also why a job offer with a stronger match and richer premium coverage can beat a nominally higher salary.
Net pay and the YTD columns
Net pay is the arithmetic result: gross pay minus pre-tax deductions, minus taxes, minus post-tax deductions. It should match your bank deposit exactly (or the sum of deposits, if you split direct deposit across accounts). For most single filers with a 401(k) and health coverage, net lands between 70% and 80% of gross; see where you fall with the take-home pay calculator.
Next to every current-period number sits a year-to-date (YTD) column: the running total since January 1. The YTD columns are more useful than the current-period ones, for three reasons:
- They preview your W-2. YTD federal taxable wages become Box 1, YTD Social Security wages become Box 3, YTD Medicare wages become Box 5. If the December stub and the W-2 disagree, one of them is wrong.
- They track annual limits. YTD 401(k) against the $24,500 deferral limit, YTD Social Security wages against the $184,500 wage base, YTD HSA and FSA against their caps. Payroll systems usually stop at the limit automatically, but job changers mid-year must track the 401(k) limit themselves because the new payroll system cannot see the old one.
- They expose slow leaks. A deduction that started one period late, a match that quietly stopped in March, or a bonus that never hit the 401(k) deferral all show up as YTD totals that do not match your own math.
Habit worth keeping: check the YTD columns on the first stub of each quarter. Four checks a year is enough to catch almost anything early.
Worked example: $75,000, semi-monthly, 6% 401(k)
Here is a full stub for a single filer earning $75,000 per year, paid semi-monthly (24 checks), contributing 6% to a traditional 401(k), with a $120/month pre-tax health premium ($60.00 per check). The health premium skips FICA, so Social Security and Medicare are computed on $3,065.00, while federal withholding is computed on $2,877.50 of federal taxable wages (the 401(k) comes out of that base too).
| Stub line | This period | How it is computed |
|---|---|---|
| Gross pay (Regular) | $3,125.00 | $75,000 / 24 pay periods |
| 401(k), traditional (pre-tax) | -$187.50 | 6% of $3,125.00 gross |
| Health premium (pre-tax, Sec. 125) | -$60.00 | $120/mo x 12 / 24 checks |
| Federal income tax (estimate) | -$265.13 | Annualized taxable wages, standard deduction, 2026 single brackets |
| Social Security (OASDI) | -$190.03 | 6.2% of $3,065.00 (gross minus health premium) |
| Medicare | -$44.44 | 1.45% of $3,065.00 |
| State income tax | $0.00 | No-income-tax state in this example; yours may add a line |
| Net pay | $2,377.89 | Gross minus all deductions and taxes |
Net pay is $2,377.89, about 76% of gross. Two things worth noticing in the math: the 401(k) line reduced federal withholding but not the FICA lines (Social Security wages are $3,065.00, not $2,877.50), and the federal line is an estimate: actual withholding depends on the W-4 on file and your employer's payroll method, and the annual return settles any difference. Rebuild this table with your own salary, state, and elections in the paycheck calculator.
Red flags: five things to check on every stub
You do not need to audit every line every period. These five checks catch nearly all real payroll errors, and each takes seconds:
- Wrong filing status or W-4 data. The header says "Married" when you filed single, or vice versa. Wrong status means wrong withholding all year and a surprise bill or oversized refund in April.
- Missing 401(k) match. You are deferring, but the employer contribution block shows no match. Matches misconfigured at enrollment are common, and some plans will not retroactively fund missed matches unless you flag them.
- Wrong state. After a move or a remote-work change, payroll may still withhold for the old state. You will eventually get it back by filing a nonresident return, but that is months of interest-free lending plus paperwork.
- Overtime at the wrong rate. The overtime line should show at least 1.5x your regular rate on hours over 40 per workweek. Also check that nondiscretionary bonuses are folded into the overtime rate; under federal rules they must be.
- FICA lines that fail the arithmetic. Social Security should be exactly 6.2% of Social Security wages (until YTD wages hit $184,500), and Medicare exactly 1.45%. These are flat rates, so any mismatch means the wage base is wrong, usually because a pre-tax deduction is coded into the wrong category.
When something is off, act in the same pay period: email payroll with the stub attached and the specific line named. Corrections are trivial in the current quarter and painful after W-2s are issued.