Reading Your Paycheck, Line by Line
Most people look at exactly two numbers on a pay stub: the gross and the deposit. Everything between them is where your money actually goes, and each line follows a different rule. This guide walks the stub top to bottom with 2026 figures; our state take-home pages compute the whole thing for your own salary and state.
Gross pay: the number nobody receives
Gross is your salary divided by your pay schedule — on biweekly pay there are 26 checks, so a $75,000 salary shows $2,884.62 per period. Everything below this line is a subtraction, and the subtractions fall into two very different families: taxes, and things you chose (benefits, retirement), which often reduce the taxes.
Federal income tax withheld: an estimate, not a bill
This is the biggest line for most people and the least understood. It is not your tax — it is your employer's estimate of your annual tax, collected in installments, based on what you put on your W-4. The real number is settled when you file: withhold more than you owe and the difference is your refund; withhold less and you pay the gap. For our $75,000 single filer taking the standard deduction of $16,100, the actual 2026 federal tax works out to $7,670 for the year, or about $295.00 per biweekly check. A refund every spring means this line runs high all year — you can tune it with a new W-4 at any time.
The two FICA lines: flat, and mostly invisible
Social Security (sometimes labeled OASDI) takes a flat 6.2% of gross up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500 — about $178.85 per check in our example. High earners see this line vanish late in the year when their cumulative wages cross the base; the "December raise" is just this cap kicking in. Medicare takes 1.45% of every dollar with no cap — about $41.83 per check here — and employers add an extra 0.9% withholding on wages past $200,000. Unlike the income tax line, there is nothing to tune: no deductions, no brackets, no W-4 influence.
State (and sometimes local) income tax
This line ranges from absent — nine states tax no wage income — to substantial, and its mechanics mirror the federal line: it is withholding against a state return you file later. A few cities and counties add their own income tax on top, which appears as a separate line. Because this is the line that varies most by geography, it is the main reason identical salaries take home different amounts in different states — our per-state pages rank exactly how much.
Pre-tax deductions: the lines that shrink other lines
Traditional 401(k) contributions, most health/dental/vision premiums, HSA and FSA contributions, and commuter benefits come out of your pay before income tax is calculated, so each dollar there reduces the federal (and usually state) withholding lines. One nuance worth knowing: 401(k) contributions escape income tax but not FICA — Social Security and Medicare are computed before your retirement deferral. Employer-paid items sometimes shown on the stub (their share of premiums, their 401(k) match) are informational and never subtracted from your pay.
Net pay: the example, assembled
Our single filer in a no-income-tax state, with no pre-tax benefits: $2,884.62 gross, minus $295.00 federal withholding, $178.85 Social Security, and $41.83 Medicare, leaves about $2,368.94 per biweekly check. Add a state income tax, a 401(k) percentage, and a health premium and each line moves — which is the real skill of stub-reading: knowing which line a given life change will move. A raise moves them all; a 401(k) bump moves only the income-tax lines; crossing the wage base moves only Social Security.
When a stub is trying to tell you something
Three things worth catching early, because they compound all year: a W-4 that still reflects a second job or a spouse's old income (withholding way off in either direction), a state line for a state you no longer live in after a move, and a 401(k) percentage still at the default from your hire date. Five minutes against the marginal vs. effective guide and your state's take-home page tells you whether the withholding lines are in the right neighborhood.
Figures are 2026 amounts from the IRS inflation adjustments; source URLs are kept with the data in the site repository. Withholding shown as annual tax divided evenly across 26 periods; employer table methods vary slightly. General information, not tax advice.