ToolsBlog Download

How to Read a Pay Stub: A 2026 Line-by-Line Guide

Decode every line on your 2026 pay stub: gross, FICA, OASDI, federal and state withholding, YTD totals, and the new W-2 Box 12 Code TT overtime line.

pay-stubpaycheckficawithholdingovertime

Disclaimer: Informational only, not tax, legal, or financial advice. Rules and rates can change. Check current IRS, SSA, and state guidance or consult a professional.

A pay stub is a receipt for your work. It shows what you earned, what the government and your benefits took, and what landed in your bank account. Trouble is, the language gets dense fast: FICA, OASDI, MED, YTD, Code TT. Most workers glance at the net pay number and file the rest.

This guide walks through every line on a 2026 pay stub, with the numbers and rules current as of this tax year. By the end, you can verify your stub against your own tracked hours and spot errors before they harden into a wrong W-2.

The 4 Sections Every Pay Stub Has

No matter what payroll provider your employer uses (ADP, Gusto, Paychex, QuickBooks), a pay stub has the same four sections.

Header information. Your name, address, employee ID, employer name, pay period dates, pay date, and check or deposit number.

Earnings. Every form of pay you received this period: regular hours, overtime hours, holiday pay, tips, bonuses, commissions, and reimbursements. Each line shows hours, rate, current-period amount, and a year-to-date column.

Taxes and deductions. Federal income tax, state and local income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), plus pre-tax and post-tax deductions like health insurance, 401(k), HSA, union dues, and garnishments.

Net pay summary. The math at the bottom: gross pay minus taxes minus deductions equals net pay, which is what gets deposited.

The universal formula is the same on every stub:

Gross Pay − Taxes − Deductions = Net Pay

If you can find those three numbers, you can verify the bottom line in 30 seconds.

Gross Pay: Reconcile It Against Your Tracked Hours

Gross pay is your first chance to catch an error. Payroll systems are accurate most of the time, but missed punches, wrong rates, and overtime miscalculations happen often enough that one in four employees hits a payroll error in a typical year.

Regular hours

The earnings section lists regular hours times your hourly rate. Multiply them yourself. If you worked 38.5 hours at $22.00, you should see $847.00 on the regular line. A mismatch usually means a missed clock-in or a rounding rule you didn’t know about.

Overtime

Federal law (FLSA) requires 1.5x your regular rate for hours over 40 in a single workweek. Some states (California, Alaska, Colorado) add daily overtime rules on top. Check that the OT line shows the correct number of overtime hours at 1.5x your base rate, not at straight time.

If your stub shows 3 OT hours at $22.00 paid as $66.00 instead of $99.00, your employer paid you the regular rate twice instead of time-and-a-half once. It happens.

Tips, bonuses, and other earnings

Tips and bonuses appear as separate earnings lines. Both count toward gross pay and both are taxable. Reimbursements (mileage, supplies) are usually nontaxable and show up on a different line so they don’t inflate your taxable wages.

The YTD column on earnings

The year-to-date column on the earnings section is your running annual total. Glance at the YTD overtime line every pay period. That number is what feeds your W-2 and, starting in 2026, your Box 12 Code TT calculation (more on that below).

If you want to back-check your gross pay against your hours from scratch, the overtime pay calculator shows what regular plus overtime should add up to for any week.

The Tax Section: FICA, OASDI, MED, and Income Tax Withholding

The tax section is where most of your paycheck disappears. Four lines do almost all the work.

Social Security (OASDI)

OASDI stands for Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. It’s the Social Security portion of FICA, withheld at 6.2% of gross wages up to the annual cap. For 2026, that cap (the Social Security wage base) is $184,500, up from $176,100 in 2025.

A worker who earns exactly the cap pays a maximum of $11,439 in OASDI for the year. After that, the line stops appearing on your stub until January. High earners often see their take-home pay jump mid-year for this reason, which usually means they’ve hit the wage base rather than a payroll error.

Some stubs label this line “SS Tax,” “FICA-SS,” “OASDI,” or just “Social Security.” Same thing.

Medicare (MED)

Medicare is withheld at 1.45% of every dollar of gross wages. There’s no wage cap. Above $200,000 in annual wages for a single filer ($250,000 married filing jointly), an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% kicks in, pushing the line to 2.35% for those dollars.

Stub labels: “Medicare,” “MED,” “FICA-MED,” or “HI” (Hospital Insurance).

Total FICA: 7.65%

Add OASDI and Medicare: 6.2% + 1.45% = 7.65%. That’s the FICA bite on a typical paycheck. Your employer matches it dollar for dollar (they pay another 7.65% on top), but that match doesn’t show on your stub.

Federal income tax (FIT, Fed W/H)

Federal income tax is the wildcard, calculated from your W-4: filing status, dependents, other income, and any extra withholding you requested. The IRS publishes withholding tables that payroll software uses. Two people earning the same gross can have very different federal withholding depending on what they put on their W-4.

If your federal withholding looks too low or too high, submitting a new W-4 is usually the fix, before anyone gets payroll involved. Guides like how to fill out a W-4 with two jobs walk through the math for stacked-income cases.

State and local income tax

Nine states have no income tax at all (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming). The rest withhold a percentage that ranges from under 2% to over 10% at the top brackets. Some cities (New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco) layer local income tax on top.

The line label on your stub will match your state’s tax code: “CA SIT,” “NY SIT,” “PA SIT/LST,” and so on.

Pre-Tax vs Post-Tax Deductions

Deductions come in two flavors, and the order matters more than most people realize.

Pre-tax deductions

These come out of your gross pay before federal income tax is calculated. The result: your taxable wages shrink, and your federal tax shrinks with them.

Common pre-tax deductions:

  • 401(k) traditional contributions: 2026 elective deferral limit: $24,500 (up from $23,500 in 2025)
  • HSA contributions: 2026 limits: $4,400 self-only / $8,750 family
  • Section 125 cafeteria plan items: most employer-sponsored health insurance, dental, vision, FSA

A 401(k) contribution saves for retirement and trims your current federal tax bill in the same move.

Post-tax deductions

These come out after taxes are calculated. They don’t change your taxable income.

Common post-tax items:

  • Roth 401(k) contributions
  • Garnishments (child support, court orders, defaulted student loans)
  • Union dues
  • Charitable giving through payroll
  • Voluntary life insurance above $50,000

Look at your stub. Pre-tax and post-tax items are usually grouped separately, but not always labeled clearly. If you’re not sure which is which, the test is simple: does adding it shrink your federal withholding next paycheck? If yes, it’s pre-tax.

A note on FICA and pre-tax items

Most pre-tax health and FSA dollars are also exempt from FICA, so they shrink both your federal income tax and your Social Security/Medicare withholding. 401(k) traditional contributions are different: they’re exempt from federal income tax but still subject to FICA. That’s why your YTD FICA wages and YTD federal-taxable wages are often two different numbers on the same stub.

Year-to-Date (YTD) Totals: The Column Most People Ignore

The YTD column is your end-of-year preview. By December, those numbers are essentially your W-2.

What to check in YTD

  • YTD gross should match the sum of your gross pay for every pay period this year.
  • YTD federal withholding plus your final estimated tax bill should leave you neither owing a large balance nor expecting a giant refund. Both signal a W-4 that needs an update.
  • YTD OASDI stops growing once you hit $11,439 (the 2026 max at the $184,500 wage base).
  • YTD Medicare keeps climbing all year with no cap.
  • YTD overtime is the number that, starting in 2026, predicts your W-2 Box 12 Code TT figure.

Spotting a stuck or duplicated line

If a deduction line shows the same current-period dollar amount as the previous stub but YTD didn’t move, the deduction may have been entered twice or not at all. If a one-time bonus appears on two consecutive stubs, you may have been overpaid (and the clawback will hit later). Compare two stubs side by side once a quarter.

Multi-job overpayment

If you held two W-2 jobs this year, each employer withheld OASDI separately, capped at $184,500 of wages per employer. If your combined wages from both jobs cross the cap, you overpaid Social Security. You can recover it as a credit on Schedule 3, line 11 of your Form 1040. The IRS won’t refund it automatically, you have to claim it.

Box 12 Code TT and “No Tax on Overtime” in 2026 (W-2, Not Pay Stub)

If there’s one 2026 tax-year wrinkle worth getting right, this is it.

Code TT lives on the W-2, not the pay stub

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) created a new deduction for qualified overtime compensation. The IRS introduced Box 12 Code TT on Form W-2 starting tax year 2026 to report it. Code TT is not a pay stub line. Your stub will continue to show your overtime pay the way it always has, lumped into the earnings section.

What Code TT actually captures

Code TT reports only the half-time premium of FLSA overtime, so the full time-and-a-half amount never lands there. If you worked 3 OT hours at a $22 base rate, you earned $99 of overtime pay total: $66 at your regular rate (which would be paid anyway) and $33 as the half-time premium. Only that $33 portion is what Box 12 Code TT will track for the year.

The deduction itself caps at $12,500 for single filers and $25,000 for married filing jointly, with MAGI-based phaseouts at higher incomes.

How to predict Box 12 TT from your stub

You can estimate what Box 12 Code TT will show using your stub today. Find the YTD overtime line. Divide by 3. That gives you the half-time premium portion (since OT is 1.5x and the “half” is one-third of the total OT pay).

Example: YTD overtime on your November stub reads $2,700. Your estimated Box 12 Code TT for the year is roughly $2,700 / 3 = $900. (Your actual W-2 will be calculated by your employer using the same logic, applied to FLSA-defined overtime only.)

For the full picture on what qualifies and how to claim the deduction, see the no-tax-on-overtime deduction guide for 2026 and the related explainer on whether overtime is taxed more than regular pay.

How to Catch Payroll Errors Fast

Most payroll errors are small. Catching one a week after it happens means a five-minute conversation with HR; catching it on a W-2 in February means an amended return.

The 60-second reconciliation checklist

Every pay period, run through these four checks:

  1. Hours match your log. Your tracked hours for the period should equal the regular plus overtime hours on the stub.
  2. Overtime paid at 1.5x. Pick the OT line, divide by hours, and confirm the rate is your base rate times 1.5.
  3. FICA is 7.65%. Add OASDI and Medicare on the stub. The sum should equal 7.65% of your FICA-taxable wages (gross minus pre-tax health/FSA, plus or minus a few cents for rounding). Once you hit the $184,500 wage base, OASDI stops and only the 1.45% Medicare line remains.
  4. Net pay matches your deposit. Compare the net pay number on the stub to what hit your bank account.

If any of these doesn’t pass, email payroll the same day with the stub attached and a one-sentence description of the gap. Most of the time, you’ll see a same-period correction or a make-up amount on the next stub.

Where ClockWage44 fits

Reconciling a stub against your hours only works if you actually tracked the hours. ClockWage44 is an hours tracker with a paycheck engine built in: log shifts across as many jobs as you want, and the app resolves federal tax, state tax, FICA, overtime rules, and deductions into a take-home figure on-device. When your stub arrives, the comparison takes seconds instead of pulling up old text messages and calendar invites.

You can also browse other ClockWage44 tools or download the Hours Tracker app for iOS or Android.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does YTD mean on a pay stub?

Year-to-date totals running from January 1 through the current paycheck for each line item.

What is OASDI on my pay stub?

Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, the 6.2% Social Security portion of FICA, capped at $184,500 of wages in 2026.

Why is my net pay so much less than my gross pay?

Federal income tax, state income tax (in most states), 7.65% FICA, plus any pre- and post-tax deductions (insurance, 401(k), garnishments) come off the top.

Why did my Social Security tax stop coming out mid-year?

You hit the 2026 wage base of $184,500. OASDI stops for the rest of the calendar year and resets in January.

Where is Box 12 Code TT on my pay stub?

It’s not on the pay stub. Code TT appears on your W-2 (Box 12) starting tax year 2026 and reports only the half-time premium of your FLSA overtime.

How do I check my pay stub is correct?

Reconcile gross pay against your tracked hours, confirm OT was paid at 1.5x for hours over 40, verify FICA is 7.65% of gross (minus pre-tax 401(k)/HSA exclusions for Medicare in some plan designs), and confirm net pay matches your deposit.

What’s the difference between a pay stub and a paycheck?

The paycheck is the payment. The pay stub is the itemized statement attached to or accompanying it.

Are employers required to give me a pay stub?

Federal law (FLSA) only requires recordkeeping, not stub delivery. Roughly half of states require itemized stubs in some form. Check your state’s labor department.

References

  1. SSA Contribution and Benefit Base: annual Social Security wage base history including the 2026 figure of $184,500.
  2. SSA 2026 COLA Fact Sheet: OASDI rates, max employee tax, and benefits COLA.
  3. IRS Additional Medicare Tax Q&A: 0.9% additional Medicare on wages above $200,000 / $250,000 MFJ.
  4. PayrollOrg: IRS Releases 2026 Form W-2 With OBBBA Changes: Box 12 Code TT and qualified overtime reporting.
  5. IRS 401(k) Contribution Limits: 2026 elective deferral of $24,500.
  6. IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-19: 2026 HSA limits of $4,400 self-only / $8,750 family.
  7. DOL Fact Sheet 21: FLSA Recordkeeping: federal recordkeeping rules; pay stub delivery varies by state.
  8. CFPB: How to Read a Pay Stub: consumer-facing breakdown of pay stub sections.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does YTD mean on a pay stub?

Year-to-date totals running from January 1 through the current paycheck for each line item.

What is OASDI on my pay stub?

Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, the 6.2% Social Security portion of FICA, capped at $184,500 of wages in 2026.

Why is my net pay so much less than my gross pay?

Federal income tax, state income tax (in most states), 7.65% FICA, plus any pre- and post-tax deductions (insurance, 401(k), garnishments) come off the top.

Why did my Social Security tax stop coming out mid-year?

You hit the 2026 wage base of $184,500. OASDI stops for the rest of the calendar year and resets in January.

Where is Box 12 Code TT on my pay stub?

It's not on the pay stub. Code TT appears on your W-2 (Box 12) starting tax year 2026 and reports only the half-time premium of your FLSA overtime.

How do I check my pay stub is correct?

Reconcile gross pay against your tracked hours, confirm OT was paid at 1.5x for hours over 40, verify FICA is 7.65% of gross (minus pre-tax 401(k)/HSA exclusions for Medicare in some plan designs), and confirm net pay matches your deposit.

What's the difference between a pay stub and a paycheck?

The paycheck is the payment. The pay stub is the itemized statement attached to or accompanying it.

Are employers required to give me a pay stub?

Federal law (FLSA) only requires recordkeeping, not stub delivery. Roughly half of states require itemized stubs in some form. Check your state's labor department.