Source: https://clockwage44.com/tools/wage-garnishment-calculator/

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# Wage Garnishment Calculator

See how much of your paycheck can legally be garnished under federal CCPA limits for consumer debt, child support, student loans, or an IRS levy.

_Interactive tool: open [the web page](https://clockwage44.com/tools/wage-garnishment-calculator/) to use it. This Markdown copy has the text only._

Limited by the 25% cap

Estimates only, not tax or legal advice. What actually comes out of your check is set by the court order, agency order, or levy notice and by your employer's payroll department. State law is frequently stricter than federal law, and where it produces a smaller garnishment the smaller figure governs.

## How the federal garnishment limit actually works

Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (29 U.S.C. 1673(a)) does not set one limit for ordinary debts. It sets two, and the smaller one wins. Test A is 25% of your disposable earnings. Test B is the amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage for the week. Whichever comes out lower in dollars is the most your employer can withhold.

Take $500 of weekly disposable earnings. Test A gives $125. Test B gives $500 minus $217.50, or $282.50. The lower figure is $125, so the 25% cap binds and $125 comes out. Now take $250 a week. Test A gives $62.50, Test B gives $32.50, and the floor binds: $32.50 is withheld, an effective rate of 13%. That second case is the one most calculators hide, and it is why this tool prints both tests instead of one answer.

The crossover is the floor divided by 0.75. Below it the floor test binds and you pay less than 25%; above it the flat 25% takes over. The floor itself changes with pay frequency under the multiples in 29 CFR 870.10:

| Pay period | Multiple of minimum wage | Protected floor at $7.25 | Crossover |
| - | - | - | - |
| Weekly or shorter | 30 | $217.50 | $290.00 |
| Biweekly | 60 | $435.00 | $580.00 |
| Semimonthly | 65 | $471.25 | $628.33 |
| Monthly | 130 | $942.50 | $1,256.67 |

The semimonthly and monthly multiples are not just the weekly figure doubled or quadrupled. They come from 4 and 1/3 workweeks in a month. Watch out for tools that build the biweekly floor out of hours worked, scaling 30 times the minimum wage by 80 hours over 40: that happens to land on $435.00 and then drifts on every other frequency. One more wrinkle. The minimum wage that governs is the one in effect on the date your earnings are paid or payable, not the one in effect when the order issued.

## What counts as disposable earnings, and what doesn't

Disposable earnings are gross pay minus the deductions your employer is required by law to make. Nothing else comes out first. Required (subtract these):

- Federal income tax
- State and local income tax
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Mandatory state retirement, disability, or unemployment contributions

Voluntary (these do not shrink the base):

- 401(k) and other voluntary retirement contributions
- Health, dental, and life insurance premiums
- Union dues
- Charitable contributions
- Voluntary wage assignments

This is the part that surprises people. Your 401(k) contribution and your health premium reduce what lands in your account but not the figure the 25% is applied to, so a garnishment can feel heavier than the percentage suggests. Tips have their own rule: tips received above the tip credit are not earnings under the CCPA at all, while the portion your employer takes as a tip credit is protected earnings, so tipped workers should leave direct tips above the credit out of the gross-pay field.

If you do not have those deduction figures at hand, the [Take-Home Pay Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/take-home-pay-calculator/) works them out from gross pay and filing status, and the [FICA Tax Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/fica-tax-calculator/) pulls the Social Security and Medicare lines out on their own.

## Garnishment limits by debt type

### Consumer and creditor judgments

The lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the excess over the protected floor. The 25% is an aggregate ceiling across every ordinary garnishment, so a second judgment creditor does not get its own slice; it waits or shares.

### Child support and alimony

50% of disposable earnings if you support another spouse or child not covered by the order, 60% if you do not, each rising 5 points when payments run more than 12 weeks in arrears. The minimum-wage floor does not apply to support orders at all, which means a worker at $200 of weekly disposable earnings owes $100 to a 50% support order while owing nothing on a consumer judgment. Several calculators apply the floor here anyway and understate the withholding.

### Defaulted federal student loans

The Department of Education can garnish administratively, without a court judgment, at up to 15% of disposable pay for a single order. The 30 times minimum-wage floor does apply. Across multiple orders the total stops at 25%, and anything above 15% requires your written consent.

### IRS tax levies

Federal and state tax debts sit outside Title III's percentage caps entirely. A levy exempts a fixed dollar amount each pay period and takes everything above it. For 2026 that exempt amount is your standard deduction plus $5,300 for each dependent, divided by your number of pay periods. Married filing jointly, biweekly, two dependents works out to $1,238.46 of standard deduction plus two lots of $203.85, or $1,646.16, which matches the published Publication 1494 table to the cent.

When several orders land at once, priority decides who gets paid: support first, then a federal tax levy that predates the support order, then everyone else out of whatever room is left.

## When state law protects more than federal law

Federal law is a floor, not a ceiling. Where state law produces a smaller garnishment, the employer follows state law. Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina bar wage garnishment for most consumer debts outright. North Carolina caps allowed garnishments at 10% of gross wages. New York uses the lesser of 10% of gross or 25% of disposable earnings, with a floor built on 30 times the state minimum wage. California protects 40 times the state minimum wage rather than 30 times the federal figure.

Rather than pretending to encode fifty states, this calculator gives you two escape hatches in the advanced panel: replace $7.25 with your state minimum wage, and replace the multiple of 30 with your state's multiple. Set 40 and your state minimum wage and you have California's floor.

Two protections worth knowing. Your employer cannot fire you because your wages are garnished for a single debt, no matter how many separate withholdings or court dates that one debt produces, though the protection ends once a second unrelated debt is in play. And a garnishment can be challenged: file a claim of exemption with the court that issued the writ, ask the creditor or agency for a hardship reduction, or request a hearing within 30 days of a Department of Education garnishment notice.

Whatever the order says, the arithmetic still starts with your own pay record. ClockWage44 logs every shift and runs the tax, FICA, overtime, and deduction math on-device, so you can hold a garnished paycheck up against the hours you actually worked. [Download the app](https://clockwage44.com/#download) to keep that record on your side. Everything here is an estimate, not tax or legal advice.

## Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about wage garnishment calculator

### How much of my paycheck can be garnished?

For an ordinary debt such as a credit card judgment or a medical bill, federal law caps the weekly garnishment at the lesser of two figures: 25% of your disposable earnings, or the amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage. At the $7.25 federal minimum wage that floor is $217.50 a week, $435.00 biweekly, $471.25 semimonthly, and $942.50 monthly. If your disposable earnings sit at or below the floor, nothing can be garnished at all. Child support allows a bigger bite. Defaulted federal student loans go the other way, capped at 15%.

### What counts as disposable earnings?

Disposable earnings are what is left after the deductions your employer is required by law to make: federal, state and local income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and mandatory state retirement or state disability and unemployment contributions. Voluntary deductions do not reduce disposable earnings, so your 401(k) contribution, health and life insurance premiums, union dues, charitable giving, and voluntary wage assignments all stay inside the figure the garnishment percentage is applied to. That is why the amount taken can feel heavier than 25% of what actually reaches your bank account. If those numbers are not broken out on your stub, the [FICA Tax Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/fica-tax-calculator/) and [Take-Home Pay Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/take-home-pay-calculator/) will work them out for you.

### Is there a minimum amount of my paycheck I get to keep?

Yes. Federal law walls off 30 times the federal minimum wage per week, or $217.50, before an ordinary garnishment can touch your pay. Between $217.50 and $290 a week, only the amount above $217.50 is fair game, which works out to less than 25%. The flat 25% cap does not become the binding limit until disposable earnings hit $290 a week. Plenty of states protect more than the federal floor.

### How much can be garnished for child support or alimony?

Up to 50% of disposable earnings if you are supporting another spouse or child who is not covered by the order, and up to 60% if you are not. Either figure rises by 5 points, to 55% or 65%, when payments are more than 12 weeks in arrears. The 30 times minimum-wage floor that protects ordinary garnishments does not apply to support orders: section 1673(b) is a percentage cap and nothing else. Roughly a third of states cap support withholding at 50% regardless of a second family or arrears, so your state may protect more than federal law does.

### How much can be taken for defaulted federal student loans?

The Department of Education can garnish administratively, without ever going to court. A single order is limited to 15% of disposable pay. The 30 times minimum-wage floor still applies here, so a low earner can owe nothing. Across multiple withholding orders the total cannot pass 25% of disposable pay, and anything above 15% requires your written consent. If you were involuntarily separated from a job and have been re-employed for less than 12 continuous months, ED generally cannot garnish yet.

### Does the 25% limit apply to IRS wage garnishments?

No. Federal and state tax debts are exempt from the Consumer Credit Protection Act's percentage caps. An IRS levy works the opposite way: instead of taking a percentage, the IRS exempts a fixed dollar amount each pay period based on your filing status, pay frequency, and number of dependents, then takes everything above it. Those exempt amounts are published annually in IRS Publication 1494. For 2026 the exempt amount is your standard deduction plus $5,300 per dependent, divided by the number of pay periods in the year. Never return Part 3 of Form 668-W and the IRS defaults you to married filing separately with one dependent, which is the smallest exempt amount on the table.

### What happens if I have more than one garnishment?

The 25% ordinary-debt cap covers every ordinary garnishment put together. A second judgment creditor does not get its own 25%; it waits or shares the same 25%. Support orders take priority over ordinary garnishments, so if 50% of your disposable earnings is already going to child support, an ordinary creditor gets nothing. Enter what is already being withheld in the advanced settings above to see how much room is left under the cap.

### Can my employer fire me because of a wage garnishment?

Federal law makes it illegal to fire an employee because their wages are garnished for one debt, no matter how many separate withholdings, court proceedings, or paydays that single debt produces. The protection disappears the moment a second, unrelated debt is being garnished. Some states extend it further. Employers who willfully break the federal rule face fines up to $1,000 and up to one year in prison.

### Do state laws change the limit?

Often. Federal law is a floor, not a ceiling: when state law produces a smaller garnishment, the employer must follow state law. Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina bar wage garnishment for most consumer debts outright. North Carolina caps permitted garnishments at 10% of gross wages. New York uses the lesser of 10% of gross or 25% of disposable earnings. California protects 40 times the state minimum wage rather than 30 times the federal figure. Use the advanced inputs above to substitute your state's minimum wage or multiple.

## Related Tools

- [Back Pay Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/back-pay-calculator/): Add up unpaid hours, missed overtime, and rate shortfalls across pay periods to see the gross back pay you are owed and your estimated take-home.
- [Final Paycheck Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/final-paycheck-calculator/): Add up unpaid hours, overtime, and unused PTO to see the gross final pay and estimated take-home you're owed when you quit or get let go.
- [First Paycheck Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/first-paycheck-calculator/): Starting a new job? See when your first paycheck lands, how many hours it covers, and its take-home after 2026 withholding, next to your first full check.
- [Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator](https://clockwage44.com/tools/freelance-hourly-rate-calculator/): Work backward from the take-home pay you want to the hourly rate you must bill, covering self-employment tax, income tax, expenses, and non-billable time.