How to Make a Pay Stub for Your Nanny (2026 Guide)

This guide explains the pay stub itself, not how to compute your household taxes. Payslip44 builds the document; it does not calculate withholding. For the tax figures behind the deductions, follow IRS Publication 926 or talk to a tax professional. Treat the numbers below as context, not advice.

You hired a nanny. Now, every couple of weeks, you hand over a payment and a nagging question: is a check with a sticky note enough, or does your nanny need an actual pay stub?

Most articles on this topic try to sell you a payroll subscription and skip the part you actually asked about. This one stays on the document. What belongs on a nanny’s pay stub, what the 2026 numbers mean, and how to produce a clean one every pay period without signing up for a monthly service.

Do you have to give your nanny a pay stub?

Federal law does not require any employer to hand out a pay stub. State law is where the obligation lives, and most states have one.

About 41 states require employers to give workers an itemized pay statement. Only nine do not: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, and Tennessee. If you employ a nanny in any other state, a stub is not optional.

Even in a state that does not require it, give your nanny one anyway:

Proof of income. Your nanny will need pay stubs to rent an apartment, apply for a loan, or qualify for benefits. A pay stub is the document those offices ask for by name.
Dispute protection. A clear record of hours, rate, and deductions settles “you shorted me last week” before it becomes an argument.
Your own tax records. At year-end you file Schedule H and issue a W-2. A folder of pay stubs is the paper trail that makes both painless.

A pay stub is cheap insurance for a relationship built on trust and money.

What counts as a household employee?

A household employee is someone you hire to work in or around your home when you control what they do and how they do it. Nannies are the obvious case. So are housekeepers, senior caregivers, private cooks, gardeners, and home health aides.

The distinction that trips families up is W-2 employee versus 1099 contractor. A contractor controls their own methods, brings their own tools, and offers their services to the public. A nanny follows your schedule, your rules, and your instructions in your home. That control makes a nanny a household employee, not a contractor, in nearly every case.

Issuing a nanny a 1099 is one of the most common household payroll mistakes. It pushes the full self-employment tax onto the nanny and skips the employer’s share you are supposed to pay. The IRS treats it as misclassification, and it can come back on you.

A few workers are exempt from household employment taxes even when they fit the job description. Wages you pay your spouse, your own child under 21, your own parent (with some exceptions), or an employee under 18 whose main job is not household work generally are not counted. Everyone else is a household employee.

The “nanny tax” in plain English (2026 numbers)

The “nanny tax” is shorthand for the employment taxes a household employer owes once wages cross certain lines. Knowing the thresholds tells you what the deductions on the stub represent.

Here is what changed for 2026:

The coverage threshold is $3,000. Pay one household employee $3,000 or more in cash wages during 2026 and you owe Social Security and Medicare taxes on those wages. That is up from $2,800 in 2025, so a nanny who was just under last year may cross it this year.
Social Security is 6.2% each. The employee pays 6.2% and you match 6.2%, up to the Social Security wage base of $184,500 for 2026. The employee’s 6.2% is the deduction that shows on the stub.
Medicare is 1.45% each. Employee and employer both pay 1.45%, with no wage cap. An Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% applies to wages over $200,000.
FUTA kicks in at $1,000 a quarter. Pay $1,000 or more in cash wages in any calendar quarter and you owe federal unemployment tax: 6% on the first $7,000 of wages, commonly 0.6% after the state credit. FUTA is an employer tax; it is not deducted from your nanny’s pay.

Two things the app does not do, and you need to know both. It does not withhold income tax automatically, and household employers are not required to withhold federal income tax unless the nanny asks and you agree. You settle all of this at year-end on Schedule H, filed with your own Form 1040, and you give your nanny a W-2 by February 1, 2027 (January 31 falls on a Sunday).

The pay stub records what you paid and deducted. The tax return is where the money actually changes hands with the government.

What to put on a nanny pay stub

A good stub answers three questions at a glance: what period is this, how was the pay calculated, and what did the nanny actually take home. Every line below serves one of those.

Employer information. Your name (or household name) and address.
Employee information. Your nanny’s name and address.
Pay period and pay date. The start and end dates the pay covers, plus the date you paid.
Hours and rate. Regular hours at the regular rate, and overtime hours at the overtime rate, listed separately. This is the line that prevents disputes.
Gross pay. Total earned before any deductions.
Tax deductions, itemized. The employee’s Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%), plus any federal or state income tax you both agreed to withhold. Each on its own line.
Other deductions. Anything pre-tax or after-tax you and your nanny arranged, shown separately.
Net pay. The amount the nanny receives. Gross minus every deduction.
Year-to-date totals. Running totals for gross, each deduction, and net. These make the eventual W-2 reconcile without a fight.

In a builder like Payslip44, each of these maps to a named section: employer and employee saved as parties, earnings entered as line items, deductions grouped by category, and YTD columns carried across every stub. You enter the amounts you or your Schedule H worksheet computed; the app arranges them into a document and keeps the money math exact to the cent.

Overtime and minimum wage for nannies (FLSA)

Nannies are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the overtime rule catches a lot of families off guard. A household employee is not an exempt salaried professional, so overtime is money you actually owe.

For a live-out nanny, you owe time-and-a-half for every hour over 40 in a workweek. If your nanny works 45 hours at $20 an hour, that is 40 hours at $20 plus 5 hours at $30, not 45 hours at $20. The overtime has to appear as its own line on the stub.

Live-in nannies are treated differently. When the family is the employer, a live-in domestic worker is exempt from federal overtime. They must still receive at least the federal minimum wage for every hour worked, and many states add their own overtime rules on top, so check yours.

Either way, the hours belong on the stub. Overtime pay is impossible to verify without the regular and overtime hours shown side by side, and “show your work” is exactly what a wage statement is for. For a deeper look at formats and record retention, see our guide on exporting a pay stub as PDF, PNG, CSV, or text.

How to create a nanny pay stub with Payslip44

Once the details are in, the stub takes about a minute. The reusable templates are the reason it stays a minute every pay period instead of a fresh data-entry chore.

Save the employer. Enter your household name and address once as a reusable party.
Save the employee. Add your nanny with the W-2 household-employee classification. Saved once, reused forever.
Enter the hours and rate. Regular hours at the regular rate, overtime hours at time-and-a-half for a live-out nanny. This is the only part that changes each period.
Add the deductions. Enter the Social Security, Medicare, and any income tax amounts you computed, each as its own line item. The app itemizes them; it does not invent them.
Title and preview the document. Give it a clear title, check the gross, deductions, net, and YTD totals, and confirm the pay date.
Export. Save as PDF for a polished document, PNG for a quick send, CSV for your spreadsheet or bookkeeper, or plain text for an email body.

Everything runs on your device. Household payroll touches a caregiver’s personal details and your family’s finances, and none of it needs to leave your phone for a cloud service to see. The math uses decimal arithmetic, so the totals on the PDF match the CSV to the penny. And because the employer and employee are saved, next payday you change the hours and export again.

That is the whole point of Payslip44: a clean, itemized, professional stub every pay period, without a monthly subscription. When you are ready, download the app and build your nanny’s first stub.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I legally have to give my nanny a pay stub?

Most states (about 41) require an itemized pay stub, and only nine do not. Even where it is not required, a pay stub is strongly recommended as proof of income for your nanny and as a wage record for you at tax time.

Is a nanny a W-2 employee or a 1099 contractor?

Almost always a W-2 household employee, because the family controls how and when the work is done. Issuing a 1099 to a nanny is usually misclassification, and it shifts taxes onto the worker that the household employer is supposed to share.

What is the nanny tax threshold for 2026?

Paying one household employee $3,000 or more in cash wages during 2026 triggers Social Security and Medicare taxes, up from $2,800 in 2025. Separately, paying $1,000 or more in any calendar quarter triggers federal unemployment tax (FUTA).

Do I have to pay my nanny overtime?

Live-out nannies get time-and-a-half over 40 hours per workweek under the FLSA. Live-in nannies are exempt from overtime when the family is the employer, but they must still earn at least the federal minimum wage for every hour worked.

What taxes come out of a nanny’s paycheck?

The employee’s share of Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%), plus any federal or state income tax the family agrees to withhold. The employer separately owes matching Social Security and Medicare, plus FUTA, which are not deducted from the nanny’s pay.

How do I create a pay stub for my nanny?

Enter the employer and employee details, the pay period, hours and rate, gross pay, each deduction, and net pay, then export a clean itemized document. A builder like Payslip44 saves the employer and employee as reusable templates so you only fill in the hours each pay period.