Paystub Calculator

What goes on a pay stub, and what each line means

A pay stub reads top to bottom in a fixed order, and the calculator above follows that same order. Header first: employer and employee, the pay period start and end dates, and the pay date. Then the body, in four blocks.

• Earnings. Regular pay (hours times rate, or salary divided by pay periods), overtime as its own line with its own hours and rate, and anything extra like a bonus, tips, or commission. Added together, these are your gross pay.
• Pre-tax deductions. 401(k) or 403(b) contributions, Section 125 health, dental and vision premiums, HSA and FSA contributions. These come out before tax is figured, which is what makes them worth having.
• Taxes. Federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, plus state and local tax if your state has one. These are withheld on your taxable wages, not your gross.
• Post-tax deductions. Roth 401(k), union dues, garnishments, loan repayments. They come out last and change nothing about your tax.
• Net pay. Gross minus all three deduction blocks. The amount that lands in your account.

Every one of those lines carries a second figure beside it: the year-to-date column, the running total of that line since January 1. Lenders read it before anything else, and it is worth understanding on its own terms (the YTD earnings calculator covers it in depth).

On the legal side: no federal law requires an employer to hand you a stub at all. The FLSA only requires them to keep the records behind it, meaning hours, wages, and deductions. 41 states go further and require a pay statement of some kind. Nine require none.

How to calculate a paystub step by step

The calculator's default figures are worth walking through, because they let you check every line by hand. Say you are paid biweekly at $25 an hour, you worked 80 regular hours and 4 overtime hours, you put $100 into a traditional 401(k), and $150 goes to your health premium.

• Gross pay. 80 hours at $25 is $2,000. Overtime runs at 1.5 times $25, which is $37.50, so 4 hours is $150. Gross pay is $2,150.
• Taxable wages. The $150 health premium comes out of both bases. The $100 401(k) comes out of the income-tax base only. So your FICA wages are $2,000 and your federal income-tax wages are $1,900.
• FICA. Social Security is 6.2% of $2,000, or $124.00. Medicare is 1.45% of $2,000, or $29.00.
• Federal income tax. Annualize the income-tax base: $1,900 times 26 periods is $49,400. Subtract the 2026 single standard deduction of $16,100, leaving $33,300 of annual taxable income. That is $1,240 of tax in the 10% bracket plus $2,508 in the 12% bracket, or $3,748 for the year. Divided by 26 paychecks, this stub's federal withholding is $144.15.
• Net pay. Deductions come to $250 pre-tax plus $297.15 in tax, so $547.15 in total. $2,150 minus $547.15 leaves $1,602.85 in take-home, a take-home rate of 74.6%.

Ten biweekly checks in, the YTD column just carries all of that forward: $21,500 of YTD gross, $16,028.50 of YTD net. Every line is rounded to the cent, and the totals are the sum of those rounded lines rather than a rounded sum. That is how payroll systems do it, and it is why the preview ties out against the paper in your hand.

Pre-tax vs. post-tax: why the order of deductions changes your net pay

This is the part that trips up nearly everyone, and the reason the panel above shows two taxable bases instead of one. Pre-tax deductions do not all behave the same way.

• A traditional 401(k) reduces your federal income tax wages, but not your Social Security and Medicare wages. You still pay the full 7.65% FICA on every dollar you defer (IRS Publication 15).
• A Section 125 health premium (and an HSA or FSA run through a cafeteria plan) reduces both. That dollar escapes federal income tax and FICA.

So $150 of health premium saves you more, this period, than $150 of 401(k) deferral does. That is also why the two bases above read $2,000 and $1,900 instead of one shared number. Post-tax deductions sit outside the tax math entirely. A Roth contribution or a garnishment comes out of what is left after tax has already been withheld, so it drops your net pay dollar for dollar and saves you nothing. Same dollar, three different outcomes, decided purely by where in the stack it sits.

One limit, stated plainly: this calculator estimates federal income tax withholding only. It models no state or local tax tables. Type your state and local withholding in as the dollar figure printed on your stub (or as a rough percentage), and every other line stays checkable.

From calculation to document: making the stub itself

A calculator hands you numbers. A pay stub is a document. The employer and employee get named, the period gets dated, every earning and deduction gets its own itemized line, the YTD column carries forward, a payment method is recorded, and at the end the whole thing has to leave your hands as a file somebody else can open.

That is the job Payslip44 does. Reusable employer, employee, and line-item templates, so you are not retyping the same details every payday. W-2, 1099, statutory, and owner classifications. Deductions grouped as Tax, Pre-tax, and After-tax, in the same order the math runs. A YTD amount on every line and YTD hours on every earnings line. Six layouts, and export to PDF, PNG, CSV, or plain text. The money math runs on a decimal library, so it will not drift by a cent across 26 paychecks, and none of it leaves your device.

Got your numbers? Download Payslip44 and put them on a real stub. More calculators live on the tools page, and longer walkthroughs are on the blog.