How to Read Your Pay Stub, Line by Line (2026)
Published June 12, 2026
Most people check one number on their pay stub: the deposit amount. That habit costs real money. Payroll systems make mistakes, benefits get coded wrong, and a misconfigured state setting can quietly withhold tax for a state you don’t live in. The stub is the receipt for the biggest transaction in your month, and it takes about four minutes to read properly once you know what each line means.
This guide decodes every standard line, flags the three errors most worth emailing payroll about, and walks through a complete worked stub for a $65,000 salary paid biweekly.
The earnings section
Gross pay is everything you earned this period before anything comes out: base wages, overtime, bonuses, commissions. On a $65,000 salary paid biweekly, that’s $65,000 divided by 26 pay periods, or $2,500.00 per check. If you’re hourly, you’ll see hours and a rate instead; 80 regular hours at $31.25 produces the same $2,500. (If you ever want to translate between the two views, the hourly to salary converter does that math instantly.)
Overtime appears as its own line because it’s paid at a different rate, usually 1.5x. If you work past 40 hours and the line is missing or the rate looks like straight time, that’s worth a question. The overtime pay calculator shows what the line should say.
Watch for other earnings codes too: HOL (holiday), PTO or VAC, RETRO (back pay for a late raise), and GTL or “imputed income” for employer-paid group term life insurance over $50,000. Imputed income is odd: it raises your taxable wages without adding cash to the check.
The tax section
Federal income tax withheld (often “Fed W/H” or “FIT”) is the estimate of your annual federal income tax, sliced per paycheck. It’s driven by your W-4 and the IRS percentage-method tables, not by a flat rate. For 2026, a single filer claims a $16,100 standard deduction, then pays 10% on taxable income up to $12,400, 12% up to $50,400, 22% up to $105,700, 24% up to $201,775, and 32/35/37% above that. The withholding tables bake those brackets in.
FICA almost always shows as two lines, because it’s legally two taxes:
- OASDI (Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, i.e. Social Security): 6.2% of wages, but only up to $184,500 in 2026. Earn more than that and the line disappears late in the year, which is why high earners see a raise-like bump in their fall paychecks. The most you’ll pay in 2026 is $11,439.
- Medicare: 1.45% of all wages, no cap. Once your wages for the year pass $200,000, your employer must withhold an extra 0.9% on the amount above that line (the threshold is $250,000 for joint filers at filing time, but employers withhold based on the $200,000 trigger regardless).
State income tax appears if your state has one. Nine states don’t, including Texas and Florida. Rates and brackets vary enormously, so check your numbers against your state’s paycheck calculator rather than a national average.
Local tax lines show up in places like New York City, Philadelphia, most of Ohio, and parts of Pennsylvania and Indiana. They’re usually labeled with the city or county name.
SDI, PFML, and the other cryptic codes
A handful of states run disability or paid-leave programs funded by employee payroll deductions. Common codes:
- CASDI or CA SDI: California State Disability Insurance, 1.3% of all wages in 2026 with no cap. Someone earning $200,000 in California pays $2,600 a year to this line alone.
- NY PFL and NY SDI: New York’s paid family leave premium and a small disability deduction (the SDI piece is capped at $0.60 per week).
- WA PFML, MA PFML, CT PL, OR Paid Leave, CO FAMLI: paid family and medical leave premiums in Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, and Colorado, each a fraction of a percent of wages, some with employer cost-sharing.
These aren’t income taxes and they don’t reduce your federal taxable wages, but they do reduce your check, so they belong in any take-home estimate.
Pre-tax vs. post-tax deductions
This distinction decides how much each deduction really costs you.
Pre-tax deductions come out before taxable wages are calculated, so they shrink your tax bill: traditional 401(k) contributions (up to $24,500 in 2026), health, dental, and vision premiums under a Section 125 cafeteria plan, HSA and FSA contributions, and commuter benefits. One wrinkle worth knowing: health premiums and HSA payroll contributions escape FICA too, but 401(k) contributions don’t. You pay Social Security and Medicare on 401(k) money even though you skip federal income tax on it.
Post-tax deductions come out after taxes: Roth 401(k) contributions, supplemental or voluntary life insurance, union dues, charitable payroll giving, wage garnishments, and loan repayments. A $100 post-tax deduction costs you a full $100; a $100 pre-tax deduction might only cost $70 to $78 of take-home, depending on your bracket.
Your stub usually groups these in separate blocks. If it doesn’t, the giveaway is the “taxable wages” figure: pre-tax items are subtracted before it, post-tax items after.
The YTD columns
Every line carries a year-to-date total alongside the current amount. These columns matter more than they look:
- They’re how you verify a raise actually took effect on the right date.
- YTD OASDI tells you how close you are to the $184,500 wage base.
- YTD 401(k) tells you whether you’ll hit the $24,500 limit early (which can cost you match dollars at some employers).
- At year end, the YTD figures should reconcile with your W-2. Box 1 of the W-2 equals YTD gross minus pre-tax deductions, not your salary, and that surprises people every January.
Worked example: $65,000 salary, biweekly, single filer
Assume a single filer contributing 6% to a traditional 401(k), paying $110 per period for pre-tax health coverage and $12.50 for post-tax voluntary life, in a state with a flat 4.5% income tax (an illustrative rate; use your state’s paycheck calculator for real numbers). This is pay period 12, mid-June.
| Line | Current | YTD |
|---|---|---|
| Regular (80 hrs @ $31.25) | $2,500.00 | $30,000.00 |
| 401(k) pre-tax (6%) | $150.00 | $1,800.00 |
| Medical pre-tax | $110.00 | $1,320.00 |
| Federal W/H | $185.00 | $2,220.00 |
| OASDI (6.2%) | $148.18 | $1,778.16 |
| Medicare (1.45%) | $34.66 | $415.92 |
| State W/H (4.5% est.) | $100.80 | $1,209.60 |
| Voluntary life post-tax | $12.50 | $150.00 |
| Net pay | $1,758.86 |
Two checks you can do on this stub in your head. FICA wages are $2,500 minus the $110 health premium, or $2,390 (remember, the 401(k) doesn’t reduce FICA): 6.2% of $2,390 is $148.18 and 1.45% is $34.66, so both lines reconcile. Federal taxable wages are $2,500 minus $150 minus $110, or $2,240 per period, which annualizes to $58,240; the $185 withheld per check tracks the 2026 single tables for that income.
Three red flags worth emailing payroll about
1. FICA math that doesn’t reconcile. OASDI should be exactly 6.2% of your FICA wages and Medicare exactly 1.45%. If the percentages are off, your taxable wage setup is wrong somewhere, often a benefit coded into the wrong category. This error compounds every period and is miserable to fix in January.
2. A pre-tax benefit being taxed. Compare federal taxable wages to gross minus your pre-tax deductions. If your health premium or 401(k) isn’t reducing taxable wages, you’re overpaying tax every check. The reverse error (a Roth 401(k) treated as pre-tax) is worse: it creates a tax bill at filing time.
3. The wrong state, or YTD numbers that don’t add up. After a move or a remote-work change, payroll systems frequently keep withholding for the old state. Also scan the YTD column occasionally: last period’s YTD plus this period’s current should equal this period’s YTD. When they don’t, something was adjusted behind the scenes, and you deserve to know what.
None of these require confrontation. A two-line email (“My OASDI looks like 6.2% of the wrong base, can you check my benefit coding?”) usually gets it fixed in one cycle. The people who catch these errors are simply the people who read the stub.