W-2 Wages from Pay Stub Calculator
Turn the YTD totals on your final pay stub into estimated W-2 Box 1, 3, 5 and 16 wages, with 401(k), Section 125, and HSA applied to the right boxes.
W-2 Wages from Pay Stub Calculator
Tax year
Rates and the Social Security wage base change every January.
Wages
The year-to-date gross earnings total from your final stub of the year, before any deduction: regular pay, overtime, bonuses, commissions, and reported tips. No final stub? Build the totals with the YTD earnings calculator.
Reduces federal wages only (Box 1)
These come off federal taxable wages but stay inside Social Security and Medicare wages, so Boxes 3 and 5 do not move.
Your own pre-tax retirement deferrals, YTD. Do not include Roth deferrals (already taxed, they change nothing) or the employer match (never your wages).
Federal-income-tax-only items not already entered above: 457(b) or SIMPLE deferrals, SARSEP deferrals, other non-cafeteria salary reductions. Treated as reducing Box 1 only. Health premiums, HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits belong in the group below.
Reduces federal and FICA wages (Boxes 1, 3, 5)
Any pre-tax payroll deduction that is exempt from FICA as well as income tax lands here. Where you split the dollars between these two fields does not change a single output; only the group total matters.
Health, dental, and vision premiums taken through a cafeteria plan, YTD. They come off before federal, Social Security, and Medicare wages are figured, so all three boxes drop.
Payroll HSA, health FSA, and dependent-care FSA contributions, YTD. Pre-tax transit and parking (Section 132(f)) goes here too: a separate arrangement from Section 125, but the FICA result is identical.
Adds to all wage boxes, plus withholding
Group-term life over $50,000, personal use of a company car, domestic-partner health coverage. Only enter amounts that are not already inside your YTD gross above. Many stubs fold imputed income into gross earnings, and entering it twice inflates every box.
Straight off the stub. This is reported on the W-2 as Box 2, not recalculated.
Most states start from federal taxable wages, so Box 16 matches Box 1. Pennsylvania does not recognize 401(k) and other elective deferrals, so Box 16 comes out higher than Box 1 by the amount you deferred. States with no wage tax (AK, FL, NV, NH, SD, TN, TX, WA, WY) leave Box 16 blank. Other states have their own add-backs: check the state line on your stub.
Optional: cross-check against tax actually withheld
Enter what your stub says came out for Social Security and Medicare and we will flag a gap against Boxes 4 and 6. Leave either field blank to skip that check.
Box 12 codes to expect
Box 12 is informational reporting. None of these codes change a wage box, and this page is an estimate rather than tax advice.
Gross to each box, line by line
| Line | Box 1 | Box 3 | Box 5 | Box 16 |
|---|
A hyphen means the line does not touch that box. Hover it for the reason. Compare this table against the W-2 your employer sent: the first row where the two disagree is the deduction that payroll classified differently than you assumed.
What each W-2 box is actually counting
The gross on your final pay stub is one number. Your W-2 turns it into several, and they are supposed to disagree. Each box counts a different slice of the same pay, because federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare do not exempt the same deductions.
Carry one example through all of it. You earned $62,000 in YTD gross, deferred $6,200 into a traditional 401(k), and paid $3,400 in Section 125 health premiums:
- Box 1 (wages, tips, other compensation): $62,000 minus $6,200 minus $3,400 = $52,400. Both deductions come off, because both are exempt from federal income tax.
- Box 3 (Social Security wages): $62,000 minus $3,400 = $58,600. The 401(k) money stays in, and the total is capped at the annual wage base.
- Box 5 (Medicare wages and tips): $58,600 as well, with no cap on top.
- Box 4 and Box 6: the tax on those wages, 6.2% and 1.45% respectively, so $3,633.20 and $849.70.
- Box 16 (state wages): $52,400 in most states, which start from federal taxable wages. In Pennsylvania it is $58,600, because the state taxes elective deferrals.
- Box 2: not calculated at all. It is the federal income tax already withheld, copied straight off your stub.
Three different wage figures on one form is normal. A W-2 where Box 1, Box 3, and Box 5 all match usually means the worker has no pre-tax retirement deferrals, not that everyone else's W-2 is wrong.
Which deductions hit which boxes
This is the table the calculator exists for. Plenty of pay-stub-to-W-2 guides run a single subtraction (gross minus all pre-tax deductions), call the result Box 1, then copy that same figure into Boxes 3 and 5. That is wrong for anyone with a traditional 401(k), which covers a lot of people.
| Line on your stub | Box 1 | Box 3 | Box 5 | Box 16 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional 401(k), 403(b), 457, TSP deferrals | Reduces | No change | No change | Reduces (except PA) |
| Roth 401(k) deferrals | No change | No change | No change | No change |
| Section 125 health, dental, vision premiums | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces |
| Payroll HSA contributions | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces |
| Health FSA | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces |
| Dependent-care FSA | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces |
| Qualified transit and parking, Section 132(f) | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces | Reduces |
| After-tax items: garnishments, union dues, Roth | No change | No change | No change | No change |
| Employer 401(k) match | No change | No change | No change | No change |
| Group-term life over $50,000 | Adds | Adds | Adds | Adds |
| Personal use of a company car | Adds | Adds | Adds | Adds |
The pattern behind the table: elective deferrals are exempt from income tax but not from FICA, while cafeteria-plan salary reductions are exempt from both. After-tax items change nothing at all, and imputed income adds to every wage box because it is compensation you received in a form other than cash. If you are unsure which class a particular stub line belongs to, the pre-tax vs. post-tax deduction calculator sorts it out against a single paycheck.
When the wage base and the Medicare surtax bend the math
Two thresholds break calculators that treat every box as one subtraction.
The Social Security wage base caps Box 3. Social Security wages stop at $176,100 for 2025 and $184,500 for 2026, so a high earner sees Box 3 pinned at the base while Box 5 keeps running with every dollar. That also caps employee Social Security tax in Box 4 at $10,918.20 for 2025 and $11,439.00 for 2026. Box 3 lower than Box 5 is the expected result above the base, not a payroll error. One catch: the base is per employer. Change jobs mid-year and the new employer starts your Social Security wages at zero, which is how people end up over-withheld and claim the excess back on their return. The FICA tax calculator runs that cap paycheck by paycheck.
The Additional Medicare Tax pushes Box 6 past a flat 1.45%. Once your YTD Medicare wages cross $200,000, your employer must withhold another 0.9% on the excess. That trigger does not vary by filing status, which is why this page asks for no filing status: nothing on the W-2 itself depends on it. What you owe is a separate question, settled on Form 8959 against $250,000 for married filing jointly, $125,000 for married filing separately, and $200,000 for everyone else. A married couple each earning $180,000 has nothing withheld and still owes the surtax on part of their combined wages. A single filer at $210,000 has it withheld and owes it. Withheld and owed are different numbers by design.
The elective deferral limit is the third figure worth checking against your stub: $23,500 for 2025 and $24,500 for 2026, plus catch-up of $7,500 (2025) or $8,000 (2026) at age 50 and over, and $11,250 for ages 60 through 63 in both years. Deferrals above the limit with no catch-up available are an excess deferral, and fixing one after April 15 means the money gets taxed twice.
When your estimate and the real W-2 disagree
If this page and the form in your hand differ by more than a couple of dollars, the cause is almost always one of these:
- Imputed income already inside gross. Many stubs fold group-term life or personal auto use into gross earnings and print it again as a memo line. Entering it a second time inflates every box.
- A third-party sick pay W-2. Disability paid by an insurer often arrives on its own W-2 with the third-party sick pay box checked, and those wages never appear on your stub.
- A mid-year employer change. Each employer runs its own wage base and its own YTD ledger, so two W-2s will not add up the way one would.
- An S-corp 2% shareholder. Health premiums paid for a more-than-2% shareholder go into Box 1 but stay out of Boxes 3 and 5, the reverse of the usual cafeteria-plan treatment.
- Deduction codes with no legend. A stub that prints MED, DEP, and RET without saying which are pre-tax leaves you guessing at the grouping, which is exactly where these estimates go wrong.
- Non-taxable reimbursements in gross. Mileage and accountable-plan expense payouts can ride along in the gross column and never touch a wage box.
Notice what those have in common: not one of them is a math problem. They are classification problems, and they exist because the stub never said which bucket a line item belonged to. A stub built with each line categorized up front (tax, pre-tax, after-tax, employer contribution), each carrying its own YTD column, reconciles to the W-2 in January without any of this detective work.
That is what Payslip44 is for. You save employers, employees, and line items as reusable templates, mark each worker W-2, 1099, statutory, or owner, and keep a YTD column on every line. Six layouts to pick from, and the money math is decimal-precise, so it will not drift by a cent across 26 pay periods. It all runs on-device, and finished stubs export to PDF, PNG, CSV, or plain text. Download Payslip44 and build stubs that reconcile to the W-2. More payroll reading lives on the blog.
One limit worth stating plainly: this is an estimate for checking a W-2 or planning ahead. It is not tax advice, and you cannot file a return from a pay stub. Wait for the real form.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about w-2 wages from pay stub calculator
How do I calculate W-2 Box 1 from my last pay stub?
Start with the YTD gross on your final stub of the year, subtract your traditional 401(k) or 403(b) deferrals and your Section 125 premiums, HSA, and FSA, then add any taxable fringe benefit that is not already sitting inside gross. What is left is Box 1. Skip Roth deferrals and after-tax deductions such as garnishments or union dues, because those never reduce taxable wages. If you do not have a final stub, the YTD earnings calculator builds the year-to-date totals from a single period.
Why is Box 1 lower than Box 3 and Box 5 on my W-2?
Almost always a traditional 401(k). Retirement deferrals are exempt from federal income tax but not from Social Security and Medicare tax, so they pull Box 1 down and leave Boxes 3 and 5 alone. If Box 3 and Box 5 sit exactly one year of deferrals above Box 1, the W-2 is right.
Why is Box 3 lower than Box 5?
You crossed the Social Security wage base. Social Security wages stop at $176,100 for 2025 and $184,500 for 2026, so Box 3 freezes at that number while Box 5 keeps climbing with every dollar you earn. Medicare has no ceiling. The FICA tax calculator shows how the cap plays out paycheck by paycheck.
Do 401(k) contributions reduce Social Security and Medicare wages?
No. Traditional deferrals cut Box 1 only. Section 125 cafeteria-plan premiums for health, dental, and vision, along with payroll HSA and FSA contributions, are the ones that come off Boxes 1, 3, and 5 alike. Mixing the two up is where most pay-stub-to-W-2 math goes wrong, and the pre-tax vs. post-tax deduction calculator walks through which class a given deduction belongs to.
Can I file my taxes with my last pay stub instead of waiting for my W-2?
No. The IRS wants the W-2 itself, and e-file will reject a return built from a stub. Employers have until January 31 to furnish it. If it genuinely never arrives, contact the employer, then the IRS, and file Form 4852 as a substitute. This calculator is for checking a W-2 or planning ahead, not for filing.
Why does my final pay stub show more gross than my W-2?
Because the stub gross is every dollar the employer ran through payroll, while Box 1 is only the taxable slice. Pre-tax deductions come out in between. Non-taxable reimbursements such as mileage or an accountable-plan expense payout can appear on a stub and never touch the W-2 at all. If you need one clean income figure for a lender instead, the proof of income calculator is built for that.
What is Box 16 supposed to be, and why does it differ from Box 1?
Most states start from federal taxable wages, so Box 16 equals Box 1. Pennsylvania is the loud exception: it taxes 401(k) and other elective deferrals, so Box 16 runs higher than Box 1 by whatever you deferred. States with no wage income tax (AK, FL, NV, NH, SD, TN, TX, WA, WY) leave Box 16 blank. Other states carry their own add-backs, so check the state line on your stub.
Box 6 has more than 1.45% withheld. Is that a mistake?
Probably not. Once your YTD Medicare wages pass $200,000, your employer must withhold an extra 0.9% on the excess, no matter how you file. That is the Additional Medicare Tax, and it lands inside Box 6. Whether you actually owe it gets settled on Form 8959 against your filing-status threshold: $250,000 married filing jointly, $125,000 married filing separately, $200,000 for everyone else. Withheld and owed often disagree.