Paycheck Error Checker

How to check your paycheck for errors in four steps

Read the stub top to bottom and test it in four passes. Each pass stands on its own, so a failure in one spot points you at the problem instead of sending you back to the start.

• Rebuild gross. Regular hours times your rate, plus overtime hours times 1.5 times your rate, plus anything else the stub lists (bonus, tips, commission, shift differential). Your total should match the gross printed on the stub. The hourly to paystub earnings calculator builds the same figure from scratch if you want a second opinion.
• Test Social Security. 6.2% of your FICA-taxable wages, which is usually gross but not always (see the next section).
• Test Medicare. 1.45% of the same FICA-taxable wages, plus 0.9% more on anything above $200,000 of year-to-date wages.
• Reconcile net. Gross minus every deduction line should equal the net at the bottom. This one is pure arithmetic, with no W-4 and no tables involved. If it fails, something is wrong no matter how the taxes were figured.

Try it on the default example above. The stub shows $25.00 an hour, 80 regular hours, and $2,000.00 gross. 25 times 80 is 2,000, so the gross line holds. Social Security should be 6.2% of $2,000, or $124.00. Medicare should be 1.45%, or $29.00. Add $247.00 of income tax and other withholding and the deductions come to $400.00, leaving $1,600.00 net. Every line agrees, so that stub is internally consistent.

Why 6.2% of your gross is often the wrong Social Security number

Social Security and Medicare are charged on FICA wages, not on gross pay, and those two figures often differ. Section 125 cafeteria-plan deductions (pre-tax medical, dental, and vision premiums, HSA contributions, health FSA contributions) come out before FICA is calculated, so they shrink the base that 6.2% and 1.45% apply to. A 401(k) or 403(b) deferral does not. Retirement money escapes federal income tax withholding but still pays FICA in full.

This is where most false alarms come from. A worker with $200 of pre-tax health premiums on a $2,000 gross check should see Social Security of 6.2% on $1,800, or $111.60, not $124.00. Multiply by gross instead and a perfectly correct stub looks $12.40 short. Put the pre-tax benefit total in its own field above and the checker moves the base for you. The pre-tax vs post-tax deduction calculator shows the same effect from the other direction.

Two ceilings sit on top of that base. Social Security stops once your year-to-date wages reach the annual wage base, which the SSA puts at $184,500 for 2026 and $176,100 for 2025. Past that point the correct withholding is zero, so a stub still taking 6.2% in December is real over-withholding and worth flagging. Medicare has no cap, but it picks up a surcharge: employers must withhold an extra 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages above $200,000 in a calendar year, whatever your filing status. If you have seen $250,000 or $125,000 quoted, those are thresholds for your tax return, not for withholding. Both ceilings depend on your running totals, which is why the advanced fields ask for them. The YTD earnings calculator works those totals out from a single stub.

The rates and limits here come from the fleet's shared tax-constants module, which tracks IRS Topic No. 751 and the SSA contribution and benefit base.

What the checker can't tell you

Federal and state income tax withholding cannot be audited from a stub. It depends on your W-4, your pay frequency, and the IRS percentage-method tables, so two people on identical gross pay can have very different withholding and both be correct. Rather than pretend otherwise, this tool folds income tax into "all other deductions" and checks only that the total reconciles to your net.

Overtime runs into a similar wall. Working it out as 1.5 times your base hourly rate gives you a floor, not the exact figure. Under the FLSA, the regular rate has to include nondiscretionary bonuses, commissions, and shift differentials, so anyone earning those is owed overtime on a rate higher than base hourly (see DOL Fact Sheet #56A). If the checker says your overtime matches but you also earned a production bonus that period, it may still be short.

Then there are the checks that feel wrong and are not. Switching from biweekly (26 checks) to semi-monthly (24 checks) changes the size of every paycheck without touching your salary, and a month with three biweekly paydays reads like a windfall that never comes back. The pay frequency converter settles that argument in a few seconds. If you are working backwards from a promised take-home figure instead, the gross-up calculator is the right tool.

What to do when the numbers really are wrong

Document it first. Keep the stub, your own time records for the period, and a note of what you expected and why. Screenshot the checker's output if it helps make the case.

Raise it in writing with payroll or HR rather than verbally with your manager, name the exact line, and give the dollar amount. Most employers correct a genuine error either off-cycle or on the next check. If it is not fixed, your state labor department handles most wage claims, and the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division enforces federal minimum wage and overtime and can recover back wages. If the disputed check was your last one at a job, the final paycheck calculator rebuilds what you were owed, including unused PTO.

Once you know what the stub should have said, it helps to have a clean copy of it. Payslip44 builds the document itself. Save employer, employee, and line-item templates once and reuse them, pick the classification (W-2, 1099, statutory, owner) and one of six layouts, and let it carry per-line YTD amounts with decimal-precise math that will not drift by a cent. Finished stubs export to PDF, PNG, CSV, or plain text, and nothing leaves the device. Download Payslip44 and rebuild the stub the way it should have read.