How to Read Your Pay Stub: Every Line Explained

7 min read · Updated 2026-06-27

A pay stub (also called a paycheck stub or earnings statement) is the itemized record that comes with each paycheck. It explains how your employer got from your gross salary to the amount in your bank account. Once you can decode it, you can verify you're being paid correctly, catch withholding errors, and prove your income for a loan or rental. Here's every section, explained.

The five sections of almost every pay stub

Layouts differ between employers and payroll providers, but virtually all pay stubs contain these five blocks:

1. Header / identifying information
2. Earnings (gross pay)
3. Taxes withheld
4. Other deductions (benefits, retirement)
5. Net pay and year-to-date totals

1. Header information

The top of the stub lists your name, employee ID, the employer's name, the pay period (the dates the paycheck covers), and the pay date. Check that the pay period matches when you actually worked — mismatches are a common source of payroll disputes.

2. Earnings: your gross pay

This section shows what you earned before any deductions. For hourly workers it breaks down regular hours, overtime (often at 1.5×), and any bonuses or commissions. For salaried workers it's usually a single figure. The total here is your gross pay — the number every tax is calculated from. (See gross pay vs net pay for more.)

3. Taxes withheld (the codes decoded)

This is where the abbreviations live. The most common ones are:

• FIT / Fed Tax: Federal Income Tax, based on your W-4 and the IRS brackets.
• SS / OASDI / FICA-SS: Social Security tax, 6.2% up to the wage base limit.
• MED / FICA-MED: Medicare tax, 1.45% of all wages.
• SIT / State Tax: State Income Tax, if your state charges one.
• SDI / Local: State disability insurance or a local (city/county) income tax, where applicable.

To understand FIT and FICA in depth, see how paycheck taxes work and our FICA explainer.

4. Other deductions: pre-tax vs post-tax

Beyond taxes, your stub may list deductions for benefits. The key distinction is timing:

• Pre-tax deductions (traditional 401(k), HSA, many health-insurance premiums) come out before income tax is calculated, lowering your taxable income.
• Post-tax deductions (Roth 401(k), union dues, wage garnishments) come out after taxes and don't reduce your taxable income.

This is why two people with identical salaries can have very different take-home pay: pre-tax contributions shrink the amount that gets taxed.

5. Net pay and year-to-date (YTD)

Net pay is the bottom line — gross pay minus all taxes and deductions — and it should match the amount deposited to your bank. Most stubs also show YTD (year-to-date) columns: the running totals since January 1. YTD figures are useful for tracking how close you are to the Social Security wage base limit, for estimating your annual tax, and for proof-of-income documentation.

Check the math yourself

The fastest way to confirm your stub is correct is to run your gross pay, pay frequency, filing status, and state through a calculator and compare the deductions line by line. If a number looks off — especially federal or state tax — it's worth raising with your payroll department.