Pay Stub Abbreviations: A Plain English Decoder for Every Line

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What Are Pay Stub Abbreviations?

Every line on a pay stub carries a short code because payroll software gives each column only a few characters. No federal rule fixes the spelling, so one employer prints FIT and another prints FED WH or FWT for the same federal income tax. The meaning behind each label, though, comes from a short list of taxes and benefits that the IRS and state agencies define. Learn that list and almost any stub becomes readable, no matter which payroll vendor produced it.

Federal law does not make the stub itself mandatory. The Department of Labor says the Fair Labor Standards Act requires accurate records of hours worked and wages paid, but does not require an employer to provide pay stubs. The records an employer must keep include total overtime earnings for the workweek, all additions to or deductions from wages, and total wages paid each pay period, which is why most stubs share the same skeleton: earnings on top, taxes and deductions below, net pay at the bottom. Your state labor department can tell you whether a state pay statement rule applies to you.

Federal taxes

Which Pay Stub Abbreviations Are Federal Taxes?

Federal lines are the easiest to check with a calculator, because two of the three use flat rates published for 2026.

FICA is the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, the law behind both payroll taxes. Its old-age, survivors, and disability insurance part is financed by the Social Security tax and its hospital insurance part by the Medicare tax, which is where the OASDI and HI labels come from. The Social Security line should stop once your year to date wages with one employer pass $184,500, so a high earner may see it disappear in the last months of the year while the Medicare line keeps running. The extra 0.9% begins in the pay period in which that employer has paid you more than $200,000, regardless of filing status.

State and local

What Do State and Local Codes Like SIT and SDI Mean?

SIT or SWT is state income tax withheld. It follows your state's own withholding tables, so there is no national rate to test it against. The other state and local codes you are likely to meet:

• SDI: state disability insurance. California's Employment Development Department sets the 2026 SDI withholding rate at 1.3% and has applied it to all wages since January 1, 2024, so a California stub has no SDI cap to watch for.
• PFL, PFML, FLI: paid family or medical leave contributions in states that run such a program. Each state sets its own rate and cap every year, so compare the line with your state agency's current figure.
• LOCAL, CITY, MUNC, SCHL: city, county, or school district income tax where a locality levies one.
• SUI, SUTA: state unemployment insurance. Most employers pay both a federal and a state unemployment tax, and FUTA, the federal one, is never withheld from you. If a SUI line appears among your own deductions, ask payroll which state program it funds.

Earnings

What Do Earnings Codes Like REG, OT and PTO Mean?

• REG: straight time pay at your base hourly rate or salary for the period.
• OT or OVT: overtime. The federal floor for covered, nonexempt workers is time and one-half the regular rate for every hour past 40 in a workweek. The line usually shows hours, rate and amount side by side, so you can multiply to check it.
• HOL, VAC, PTO, SICK: paid holiday, vacation, paid time off or sick hours used this period.
• BON, BONUS, COMM: bonus or commission. The IRS treats bonuses, commissions and overtime pay as supplemental wages. When an employer identifies them separately from regular pay, it may withhold federal income tax at a flat 22%, which explains why a bonus check can look heavily taxed.
• DIFF or SHIFT: shift differential, the added rate for nights, weekends or other set hours.
• RETRO or ADJ: a correction that belongs to an earlier pay period.
• GTL or IMP: imputed income for group term life coverage above $50,000. Your employer must count that cost as wages, minus anything you paid toward the insurance, even though you never receive it as cash.
• GROSS and NET: everything earned before any deduction, and what actually reaches your account.

Deductions

Which Pay Stub Codes Are Pretax and Which Are After Tax?

A pretax deduction lowers the wages used for one or more taxes; an after tax deduction comes out of pay that has already been taxed. The codes below tell you which kind you are looking at.

• 401K, 403B, 457: traditional retirement deferrals. The IRS employment tax table shows 401(k) deferrals as generally exempt from income tax withholding but taxable for Social Security and Medicare, so these lines shrink the wages used for FIT but not those used for SS or MED.
• ROTH or R401K: Roth deferrals. Designated Roth contributions stay in taxable wages, so they reduce nothing but your net pay.
• S125, SEC125, CAF, POP: a section 125 cafeteria plan, the arrangement that lets health, dental and vision premiums (often MED, DEN, VIS) come out before tax. Watch for the collision: MED can mean Medicare tax in the tax block or a medical premium in the deduction block.
• HSA: health savings account. HSA contributions made through salary reduction in a section 125 plan are not wages and are not subject to employment taxes or withholding.
• FSA or HCFSA: health flexible spending arrangement, limited to $3,400 of salary reduction for plan years beginning in 2026. DCFSA or DCAP is the dependent care version; Publication 15-B lists that exclusion as $7,500, or $3,750 for a married employee filing a separate return.
• Other lines: UNION or DUES for union dues, GARN or CS for a garnishment or child support order, and LOAN for repayment of a retirement plan loan.

Decoding One Biweekly Stub

Illustrative biweekly stub: $2,500 of REG pay, a 5% traditional 401K deferral and no cafeteria plan deductions. FIT and SIT depend on your Form W-4 and state tables, so they are not shown.

Columns

What Do YTD, CUR and the Other Column Headers Mean?

• CUR or CURRENT: this pay period only.
• YTD: the running total for the year so far. On the final stub of the year these totals are the raw material for your Form W-2.
• HRS, RATE, AMT: hours, rate and dollar amount for each earning line.
• PP, PER END, CHK DATE: the pay period covered and the date you were paid, two items the Labor Department's recordkeeping rules list separately.
• DD or ACH: direct deposit.
• EE and ER: employee and employer. An ER line is a cost your employer carries, not money taken from you.

Your YTD gross and your W-2 Box 1 often differ, and the gap is usually your pretax deductions. The site's guide to the year to date column walks through that reconciliation line by line.

Employer side

What Does the Employer Section of a Pay Stub Show?

Many stubs add a block of employer paid items that never reduce your net pay. ER SS and ER MED mirror your own lines, because the employer pays 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare on the same wages. There is no employer share of the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax, so ADDL MED shows up only on the employee side. FUTA is paid by the employer alone and is not withheld from your wages.

ER 401K or MATCH is the employer contribution to your retirement account. A line such as ER HSA is an employer deposit to your health savings account; at year end those deposits, including amounts you elected to contribute through a cafeteria plan, are reported on Form W-2 in Box 12 with code W.

Fixing errors

What Should You Do If a Pay Stub Code Looks Wrong?

• Check the rate first. Divide the SS line by the wages it was charged on. Anything other than 6.2% before you reach $184,500, or other than 1.45% for MED, points to a setup problem worth raising.
• Ask payroll for its code legend. Labels are employer specific, and the payroll office is the only reliable source for an unfamiliar one.
• Keep the last stub of the year. The IRS tells workers whose W-2 is missing or incorrect to contact the employer first. If a corrected form still has not arrived by the end of February, you can call the IRS at 800-829-1040.
• Know the correction forms. Employers fix a filed W-2 with Form W-2c. If a corrected form comes too late, you may file using Form 4852 as a substitute, then file Form 1040-X if the final figures differ from your estimate.

This is general information, not tax advice.