What Does Remainder of Net Pay Mean for Garnishment?

On a pay stub or garnishment order, the “remainder of net pay” is the money that actually reaches your bank account after every deduction has been taken out, including any garnishment. It’s the last number in the paycheck chain: gross pay minus required taxes, minus any court-ordered withholding, minus voluntary items like health insurance and retirement contributions. The phrase turns up most often on child support withholding orders, creditor garnishment notices, and detailed pay stubs, and calculating it correctly depends on keeping three different paycheck figures straight.

Gross Pay, Disposable Earnings, and Net Pay Are Not the Same

These three terms sound interchangeable. They aren’t, and the differences drive every garnishment calculation.

Gross pay is your total compensation for the period before anything is withheld: wages, salary, commissions, bonuses. It’s the top line on the stub.

Disposable earnings is a legal term. Federal law defines it as what remains after subtracting only the deductions your employer is required by law to withhold, primarily taxes and FICA.¹ Voluntary deductions do not reduce this number. Courts and creditors use disposable earnings, not take-home pay, to calculate how much of your check they can take.

Net pay, or take-home pay, is what’s left after every deduction, voluntary or not, plus any garnishment. When a withholding order refers to the “remainder of net pay,” it means the balance left after the ordered withholding has been applied and everything else has come out.

Which Deductions Come Out Before Garnishment Is Calculated

Only deductions your employer is legally required to withhold reduce disposable earnings. Those are the deductions that come out before a creditor’s percentage is calculated:

Federal income tax based on your W-4.²
State and local income taxes where they apply.
Social Security at 6.2% of wages up to $184,500 in 2026.³
Medicare at 1.45% of all wages, with an additional 0.9% on earnings above $200,000.³
State-mandated programs such as disability insurance, unemployment insurance, or paid family leave, where required.

Voluntary deductions are a different matter. Health insurance premiums, 401(k) and 403(b) contributions, life insurance, union dues, and charitable payroll deductions do not reduce disposable earnings under federal law.⁴ They still come out of your paycheck, but they don’t shrink the pool a creditor can reach.

This is where most calculation errors happen. If your gross pay is $1,000 and required taxes total $200, your disposable earnings are $800, even if $150 in insurance and retirement contributions also comes out. The creditor’s garnishment is calculated on $800, not $650.

How Much Can Be Garnished Depends on the Debt

The percentage of disposable earnings a creditor can take varies by the type of debt. This directly changes what’s left as your remainder.

Consumer Debts

For credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, and similar consumer debts, the garnishment is the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings for the week or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.⁵ Thirty times $7.25 is $217.50, which functions as a floor. If your weekly disposable earnings are $217.50 or less, a consumer creditor gets nothing. At $250 in weekly disposable earnings, the creditor can take only $32.50, not the $62.50 that a straight 25% would produce.

Child Support and Alimony

Support orders operate on a separate, higher scale. Neither the 25% cap nor the minimum-wage floor applies.⁵ Two factors set the ceiling: whether you support another spouse or child, and whether you’re in arrears.

Supporting another family: up to 50% of disposable earnings, rising to 55% if you’re 12 or more weeks behind.
Not supporting another family: up to 60% of disposable earnings, rising to 65% if you’re 12 or more weeks behind.⁶

Federal Student Loans

Defaulted federal student loans carry a cap of 15% of disposable earnings.⁷ These garnishments are administrative and don’t require a court order. The 30-times-minimum-wage floor still protects the lowest earners.

Federal Tax Levies

The IRS uses different math. Instead of a percentage, the IRS calculates an exempt amount based on filing status and the standard deduction, published each year in Publication 1494, and takes everything above that exempt figure.⁸ The percentage caps in the Consumer Credit Protection Act do not apply to federal or state tax debts, so a tax levy often takes a much larger share than an ordinary garnishment would.⁵

A Worked Example

Walk through the math with a weekly gross pay of $1,000 and a single consumer garnishment.

Step 1. Gross pay: $1,000.

Step 2. Subtract legally required deductions:

Federal income tax: $88.00
State income tax: $40.00
Social Security (6.2%): $62.00
Medicare (1.45%): $14.50
Total: $204.50

Disposable earnings: $1,000 − $204.50 = $795.50. This is the number garnishment limits apply to.

Step 3. Calculate the garnishment. Twenty-five percent of $795.50 is $198.88. The excess over $217.50 is $578.00. The lesser figure controls, so the garnishment is $198.88.

Step 4. Subtract voluntary deductions. Assume $80.00 for health insurance and $60.00 for a 401(k), totaling $140.00.

Step 5. Calculate the remainder. $795.50 − $198.88 − $140.00 = $456.62. That’s the remainder of net pay, the amount that lands in the bank account.

Some states allow the employer to charge a small administrative fee for processing the garnishment, which would also come out before you see the remainder.

When More Than One Garnishment Applies

Multiple simultaneous garnishments are more common than people expect, and federal law does not decide which creditor gets paid first. Priority is set by state law or by the issuing court.⁴

Child support usually takes priority over consumer debt. If a support order already claims 50% of your disposable earnings, a consumer creditor typically gets nothing more, because the support withholding already exceeds the 25% cap that would apply to the consumer debt. Garnishments don’t stack above the highest applicable ceiling; they’re absorbed within it.

Federal tax levies are the exception. A levy filed before a support order was established can take priority over that order; a support order established before the levy generally takes priority over it. The outcome turns on which obligation came first.

Payroll handles the mechanics, but check each stub. Priority and calculation errors do occur, and they cost the employee.

How Tips Affect the Calculation

If a large share of your income comes from tips, your remainder can look very different from what the base wage suggests. Under the Consumer Credit Protection Act, only the cash wages the employer pays directly and any tip credit the employer claims count as “earnings” for garnishment purposes.⁴ Tips beyond those amounts are not earnings under the statute.

A server paid $2.13 per hour in cash wages with a $5.12 tip credit has earnings of $7.25 per hour for garnishment. The percentage cap applies only to that base after required deductions, and the rest of the tips stay out of reach of most creditors. The remainder of net pay in a tipped job can therefore be much larger than the garnishment percentage on the paycheck alone would imply.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1672 – Definitions
2
Internal Revenue Service. About Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Certificate
3
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Publication 926 – Household Employer’s Tax Guide
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #30 – Wage Garnishment Protections of the Consumer Credit Protection Act
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment
6
Administration for Children & Families. Is There a Limit to the Amount of Money That Can Be Taken From My Paycheck for Child Support
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 USC 1095a – Wage Garnishment Requirement
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6334 – Property Exempt From Levy