Wage Garnishment Calculator

When a court order or government agency directs your employer to withhold part of your pay, federal law caps how much can leave your paycheck. The figure below estimates that ceiling for the obligation you select, whether it stems from child support, a creditor judgment or defaulted student loans; for an IRS levy, which works from exemption tables rather than a percentage, it points you to those tables instead. Seeing the limit ahead of time lets you budget around a smaller take-home figure and gives you a basis to question a withholding that looks too aggressive.

Garnishment limits apply to disposable earnings, the pay left after legally required deductions such as federal, state, and local taxes, Social Security and Medicare. For ordinary creditors, the cap is whichever is smaller: 25% of disposable earnings, or the amount by which those earnings top 30 times the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour x 30 = $217.50 per week). Defaulted federal student loans can be garnished up to 15% of disposable earnings. Child support reaches further: up to 50% of disposable earnings if you support another spouse or child, or 60% if you don't, plus 5 more percentage points when payments are more than 12 weeks in arrears. IRS levies follow their own exemption tables keyed to filing status and dependents.

Two points trip people up. First, leaving out a required deduction inflates disposable earnings and overstates what can be taken, so account for every mandatory withholding. Second, many states shield more of your wages than federal rules do, and the more protective limit controls. If several garnishments hit at once, the combined withholding still cannot exceed the single highest applicable federal or state cap rather than stacking on top of each other.