Fillable Form Pay Stub Template

A pay stub is an outline of an employee’s wage. It is meant to show the details for each employee for each pay period, which includes information such as their wages and deductions due to taxes. Depending on your state, a pay stub may or may not be required. However, many states will require that you still provide some form of written pay statement, even if you are not required to provide a pay stub to your employees. You are also still required to keep track of the hours that your employees work according to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Pay stubs may be issued weekly, every two weeks, or monthly, according to the company. They are part of the paychecks that the company issues to its employees. Pay stubs can be issued either physically or digitally.

The pay stub should include the employee’s personal details, such as their name, address, and Social Security number. Depending on their circumstances, most or all of the information listed in here might be seen in the pay stub. Information that includes:

1. Gross Pay- The total amount you have earned before taking account of any deductions such as federal, state, and local taxes, as well as any insurance or retirement contributions. Gross pay is what attracts the employees, and is what employers use when making a salary offer. Gross pay is also where bonuses will show up

2. Federal taxes withheld- Federal tax withholding is the federal payroll that employers are legally required to withhold from the pay of their employees, which is to be reported and paid to the federal government. The federal tax will depend on how much the employee earns The U.S. personal income tax operates on a graduated scale, that starts at 10 percent and slowly rises according to how high your income is to a maximum of 37 percent (as of 2018).

3. State taxes withheld- While state taxes work in the same way as federal taxes, their income taxes may vary. Some states have no income tax at all, such as Florida or Alaska, which means there is no withholding. Federal taxes, on the other hand, are consistent throughout the United States.

4. Local taxes withheld- Some areas may set their own local taxes, on top of the federal and state taxes. These cities or towns have a jurisdiction on the tax entry for an employee’s paycheck. Taxes paid here usually go to the maintenance of the community or funding of local projects such as buildings or parks.

5. FICA- The Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax is taken out of a worker’s paycheck as a contribution to Medicare and Social Security, which are meant to be benefits for older Americans who are retired, people with disabilities, and children whose parents are deceased workers.

6. Retirement or pension plan contribution- This is a retirement plan in which the employer, employee, or both contribute to. This includes 401(k) plans and pensions. Retirement plans, however, are purely voluntary and not required from employers. If your employer has retirement plans, then your contributions to this will appear on your pay stub.

7. Wage garnishments- Wage garnishment is when your employer withholds a certain amount from your income to pay off whatever debt you may have (such as child support). This amount will continuously be taken out of your pay until you have completely paid all of it.

8. Back pay- Back pay is the difference between how much an employee was paid and how much they should have been paid. If an employer switches your employment from hourly to salary, or vice versa, then you are entitled to back pay. You will also be eligible for back pay if you were unlawfully fired from your company, or you were prevented from completing or doing work at any time.

9. Life or Health Insurance deductions

10. The accumulated time for a person when he was sick, took paid time off, or had vacation

11. Overtime accumulated- If the employee has done any, it will show the rate and how many hours of overtime the employee has worked.

12. Net pay- This is the actual amount you receive after your Gross Pay has received deductions.

The pay stub may also include the year-to-date information. If you are an hourly employee, the pay stub should not the hours worked and the hourly rate of pay. If you are a salaried employee, it should show around 35 to 40 hours per week.

Pay stubs can be used as proof that you have a stable income, as they include a lot of data on how much you earn, when asked. Ways that your pay stubs can be used include:

1. Filing Taxes- Having pay stubs can speed up the process of filing your taxes. Keeping your pay stubs for every paycheck you receive can give you an insight of how much you’ve earned in a certain amount of time. This means that you won’t have to backtrack to your bank accounts to double check all the time. Also, since pay stubs have proof of things like business expenses and deductions like payments, this’ll speed up the process of determining the amount of tax that you have to pay.

2. Proof of Income- Your proof of income has many different applications. For example, when applying for medical insurance, the agent may ask for evidence that you actually have a stable income. A pay stub shows just that, which is important evidence of how much money you are making at the moment. Many countries also typically require visa applicants to show proof of income, as evidence that they can actually afford the trip. There will usually be an income threshold that would need to be passed. This also applies to things like rent. Your landlord or agency will ask for your proof of address and may ask for your proof of income as well, which is where your pay stubs will come in.

3. Compensation- If you ever find yourself in an accident or become afflicted with an illness that leaves you unable to work for some time and you need to file for compensation for loss of earnings, you can use pay stubs as evidence. Since the pay stubs are already evidence of how much you earn, they are also evidence of how much you are losing due to not working. It is quite rare that someone receives no sick pay while off work, and losing even a day or two of work due to being afflicted by illness or injury can already take a huge chunk out of your salary. At the very least, having the evidence of your income can be used when calculating the loss of your earnings per day.

4. Suspicious activities- It is not uncommon for people to attempt to swindle someone from their hard-earned pay, despite handing them their pay stub (which may be fake). Maybe they only wanted the labor but never intended to pay in the first place, or they lied about placing the money in your bank account but never actually did anything of the sort and hoped that you would forget. On the off chance that this might happen to you, having the pay stubs would work in your favor as probably the best evidence to make your case about the discrepancy in your account.

While both lay out the income an employee receives during payment, there are some notable differences in both.

Paychecks do not have much information. They show the net amount of what a person has, who’s paying, and who it’s being paid to, but it does not show the frequency of these payments, such as if they are being paid weekly, biweekly, or monthly. A $3500 paycheck might seem a lot at first, but the paycheck won’t show the circumstances of how this amount was achieved. Factors such as overtime aren’t shown in the paycheck. In other words, what you see in the paycheck is only the end result of the combination of all the work that the person has done in a certain amount of time, but it does not go into deeper details..  Thus, it is impossible to determine how much a person actually earns when only glancing at their paychecks.

Pay stubs, on the other hand, show all information about an employee’s wage. They often include additional information, such as medical and retirement withholdings, vacation time accrued, YTD salary amounts, etc. Unlike Paychecks, one can easily discern someone’s wage after looking at their pay stubs due to the myriad of information in them.

Before the advent of computers and banks, pay stubs had to be distributed physically, meaning that every employee had to be given a paycheck with a “receipt” attached to it. After detaching your paycheck from the receipt, only the pay stub would remain, which gave it a literal meaning. Nowadays, with digital pay stubs being online thanks to computers and the internet, physical pay stubs are slowly fading out of practice.

Technology has risen to make certain things more convenient, banking, being one of them. Pay stubs no longer have to be given physically every pay day; employers only need to directly deposit their payment to their employee’s bank account, and employees only have a balance in their bank account.