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Wage Garnishment
Wage Garnishment paystub meaning: A court or agency order forcing your employer to withhold part of your pay for a debt, capped by federal law at a...
A court or agency order forcing your employer to withhold part of your pay for a debt, capped by federal law at a percentage of disposable earnings.
A wage garnishment is a legal or equitable procedure through which your earnings are withheld to pay a debt. Your employer is not choosing to do it and cannot negotiate the amount. The federal cap runs off disposable earnings, not gross pay and not take-home pay. Disposable earnings are what is left after amounts required by law to be withheld: federal income tax, your share of Social Security and Medicare, state and municipal income tax, and the employee share of state unemployment insurance. Voluntary deductions stay in. Your 401(k), health premiums, union dues and life insurance are not subtracted first, which is why the garnishable base is usually higher than the net pay at the bottom of the stub. For ordinary consumer debts the Consumer Credit Protection Act caps withholding at the lower of 25% of disposable earnings, or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for each week in the pay period. At that wage the floor is $217.50 weekly, $435.00 biweekly, $471.25 semimonthly and $942.50 monthly, and nothing may be taken below it. Different debts get different caps. Child support and alimony run to 50% of disposable earnings, 60% if you are not supporting another spouse or child, each rising 5 points when payments are more than twelve weeks in arrears. Defaulted federal student loans are limited to 15%. Federal and state tax debts carry no CCPA percentage cap at all, and neither do garnishment orders issued by a court acting under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Act; orders tied to other bankruptcy chapters stay inside the limits.
A deduction can be pre-tax, post-tax, voluntary, or required. Its label alone does not establish how it affects taxable wages, so check the plan document, employee election, payroll policy, and year-to-date amount.
When this term appears on a statement, read its label, current amount, year-to-date amount, pay-period context, and any adjacent rate or hours together. Resolve a mismatch with the original issuer or the cited authority rather than changing a record to force a preferred result.
Example
Biweekly stub, gross pay $1,800. Deductions on the stub: federal income tax $160.00, Social Security $111.60 (6.2%), Medicare $26.10 (1.45%), state income tax $72.00 401(k) $90.00, union dues $40.00 Only the first four are required by law. Disposable earnings: $1,800.00 - $369.70 = $1,430.30. The $90 and the $40 stay in the base. Test 1: 25% of $1,430.30 = $357.58. Test 2: 30 x $7.25 x 2 weeks = $435.00 floor. $1,430.30 - $435.00 = $995.30. The cap is the lower of the two, so a consumer-debt garnishment on this check may not exceed $357.58. Same stub, a child support order instead, with the employee supporting another child and not in arrears: the limit is 50% of $1,430.30 = $715.15.