How to Read Your Pay Stub, Line by Line
A pay stub looks like alphabet soup until someone translates it. Here's a realistic example: $75,000 a year, paid every two weeks, so each paycheck starts at $2,884.62 gross. After a 5% 401(k) contribution, federal withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and California taxes, net pay lands at $2,121.90 (all figures are 2026 estimates for a single filer). Follow along line by line and you'll never squint at a stub again. To estimate your own stub before payday, try our paycheck calculator.
The short answer
Read a pay stub top to bottom, the way the money flows. The top shows gross pay and hours worked. Next come pre-tax deductions like your 401(k). Then the tax withholdings: federal, Social Security, Medicare, and state. The final line is net pay — your take-home. There's also a YTD (year-to-date) column showing cumulative totals, which is the best error-checking tool on the whole page. If you want the big-picture version of what each deduction is, our guide to what's taken from gross pay covers the full order.
Top of the stub: gross pay and hours
The header carries the boring-but-important stuff: your name, the employer's name, the pay period dates, and your pay frequency. Right below that is gross pay: everything you earned this period before a single deduction. For a $75,000 salary paid biweekly (26 paychecks a year), that's $75,000 ÷ 26 = $2,884.62. Every stub does this division for you, but it's worth checking once. If the number doesn't match your salary divided by your pay periods, something's off.
If you're hourly, this section also lists your pay rate and hours: regular hours, overtime hours (usually at 1.5×), and sometimes PTO or sick hours used. Salaried folks typically just see the flat gross. Either way, this is line one of your error check. More on that below.
Preview your next stub before payday
Enter your salary and deductions to see each line with 2026 estimates.
Estimate my paycheck →Pre-tax lines
Below gross pay, the first deductions are the pre-tax ones. They come out before income tax is calculated, which is the whole point. In our example, the employee contributes 5% to a traditional 401(k): $2,884.62 × 5% = $144.23. That leaves taxable wages of $2,740.39, the number federal and state taxes will be figured on.
Your stub may show sibling lines here too: HSA contributions, and health, dental, or vision premiums. They all work the same way: subtracted first, taxed never (for income tax purposes). If a line says "401(k) Roth" instead, that's post-tax and appears further down; same account type, very different tax treatment. All figures in this walkthrough are 2026 estimates; assumptions are listed at our methodology page.
Tax lines, decoded
Now the abbreviations. Here's what each tax line means in our example, computed on the $2,740.39 of taxable wages (except FICA, which uses full gross):
- Fed W/H or FIT: Federal withholding, ≈ $264. Your employer's per-paycheck estimate of your federal income tax, based on your W-4. It's a prepayment, not the final bill. That gets settled at tax time.
- SS or OASDI: Social Security, $178.85. A flat 6.2% of your full $2,884.62 gross. No brackets, no deductions, no exceptions at this income level.
- Med or HI: Medicare, $41.83. A flat 1.45% of gross. Like Social Security, it's exact: what comes out is what you owe.
- CA SIT: California state income tax, ≈ $97. Withheld per California's progressive brackets. This line simply doesn't exist in Texas, Florida, and the other no-income-tax states.
- CASDI: California State Disability Insurance, ≈ $37.50. A flat 1.3% of wages funding paid family leave and disability. Easy to miss, impossible to avoid.
| Stub code | Full name | 2026 rate / rule | On this stub |
|---|---|---|---|
| FIT / Fed W/H | Federal income tax withholding | Your W-4 + federal brackets | $263.27 |
| OASDI / SS | Social Security tax | 6.2% up to $184,500 of wages | $178.85 |
| HI / Med | Medicare tax | 1.45% (+0.9% over $200,000) | $41.83 |
| SIT | State income tax (California) | 1%–12.3% graduated brackets | $97.04 |
| SDI | CA State Disability Insurance | 1.3% of gross wages | $37.50 |
| YTD | Year-to-date totals | Running total since January 1 | — |
Add it up: $2,884.62 gross, minus $144.23 (401k), minus $263.27 federal, minus $178.85 Social Security, minus $41.83 Medicare, minus $97.04 state, minus $37.50 SDI — net pay lands at $2,121.90. That's the number that hits your bank account, and now you know exactly what happened to the other $762.72.
YTD: the column most people ignore
Most stubs have two amount columns: "current" (this paycheck) and "YTD" (year-to-date). The YTD column is the unsung hero. Multiply any current-period number by the number of paychecks received so far. If the YTD doesn't roughly match, you've found an error or a mid-year change worth understanding.
YTD is also how you track annual limits without a spreadsheet. Contributing to a 401(k)? The YTD deduction line tells you exactly how close you are to maxing out. Wondering whether your withholding is on pace? YTD federal tax versus your expected annual bill gives an early warning, months before tax season. I check this column maybe twice a year, and both times it's caught something I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
3 things to check every payday
You don't need to audit the whole stub each time. Three quick checks catch nearly every payroll mistake:
1. Hours and rate are right. Overtime missing, PTO misclassified, a wrong hourly rate. This is where payroll errors live. Compare against your own records or timesheet. Takes ten seconds.
2. YTD totals make sense. Pick one line (gross pay is easiest) and multiply by paychecks so far, and compare to YTD. If you're on paycheck 10 of 26, YTD gross should be about 10 × $2,884.62 = $28,846.20. Way off? Ask payroll.
3. Benefits and match are as expected. Confirm your 401(k) percentage is what you elected, the employer match actually appears (it's usually a separate line), and health premium deductions match your plan's cost. Open enrollment changes are the usual culprit when these drift.
Once a year, add a fourth: review your W-4. Marriage, a new baby, a second job, or a big raise all change the right withholding amount, and the W-4 is the only lever you have.
Know your numbers before payday
Model any salary, state, and 401(k) rate line by line.
Run my numbers →The bottom line
A pay stub is just a story told in order: gross pay ($2,884.62), pre-tax deductions ($144.23 to the 401(k)), tax withholdings ($263.27 federal, $178.85 Social Security, $41.83 Medicare, $97.04 California tax, $37.50 SDI), and net pay of $2,121.90 (all 2026 estimates). Learn the five abbreviations in the tax section and the YTD column, and no stub will ever confuse you again. To see these lines filled in with your own salary, run the paycheck calculator. It builds the whole stub for you.