Set the year-to-date figures on an earnings statement beside the 2026 wage ceilings, employee contribution maximums, and selected rate relationships. Made for anyone who reads or reviews pay stubs, not only the people who prepare them.
Step 1 · Printed year-to-date figures
Take every figure from a single employer's payroll record. Leave a field empty if the statement doesn't print that amount.
Built from the same 2026 payroll parameter sources that PayStubCheck's calculation-review tools draw on.
Select the country, enter the pay date, and fill in only the year-to-date figures the payroll record actually prints. An empty field is never read as zero.
Year-to-date fields do more than record history. They show where a worker stands against yearly wage ceilings, contribution maximums, and withholding thresholds that can change what a later paycheck should show. Someone who looks only at this period's gross and deductions can miss that context. PayStubCheck's YTD Cap Checker makes those relationships easier to examine without turning an earnings statement into an approval, authenticity, or fraud judgment.
In 2026, employee Social Security withholding of 6.2% applies only up to the yearly Social Security wage base reflected on the payroll record. After an employer's reported Social Security wages reach that base, further wages from that same employer should no longer trigger employee Social Security withholding. Regular Medicare works differently: the 1.45% employee Medicare tax has no yearly wage ceiling.
Additional Medicare Tax is not a second yearly “cap.” For employer withholding, it is triggered once the Medicare wages a single employer pays during the calendar year go above the published threshold. What the employee finally owes on a tax return can turn on filing status and combined wages, so the checker describes the employer-withholding relationship and makes no tax-return determination.
Canadian pension contributions follow yearly ceilings, yet the employee maximum is not always one full-year figure for everyone. When contribution obligations begin or end partway through the year, the maximum that applies can change. That is why the Canadian path asks whether a full-year contribution period is known, and answers Unable to determine rather than assuming 12 contribution months when that fact is unclear.
Québec payroll runs on separate contribution tracks. QPP stands in for CPP, QPP2 stands in for CPP2, the employee EI rate is reduced, and QPIP is its own contribution with a separate yearly maximum on insurable earnings and its own employee premium ceiling. Selecting Québec switches the checker to the Québec parameter set.
Yearly withholding rules can work differently for someone with more than one employer. Each U.S. employer, for example, withholds Social Security on the wages that employer pays, and any excess Social Security withheld across several employers may be settled on the employee's tax return. The tool is therefore meant for one employer's payroll record at a time, rather than adding unrelated year-to-date figures together and calling the result an employer mistake.
A Consistent result means the figures you entered did not conflict with the particular 2026 limit, threshold, or rate relationship that was tested. It does not declare the earnings statement real, valid, verified, fraud-free, or fit for any application. Calculation consistency is one objective signal and should stay separate from verifying employment, verifying income, or tracing where a document came from.
This page will not apply 2026 statutory limits to earlier or later pay dates. When the pay date falls outside January 1 to December 31, 2026, statutory checks are shown as Not evaluated. Coverage and source dates are set out in the Pay Stub Review methodology and on the corrections and updates page.
A payroll limit is a yearly maximum on either the earnings a contribution applies to or the employee contribution itself. The year-to-date field shows how much of that yearly limit has already built up on the payroll record.
Once an employee's Social Security wages reach that employer's yearly wage base, any further wages from that employer are no longer subject to employee Social Security withholding for the rest of the calendar year. A smaller Social Security deduction in a period near the ceiling can therefore be correct.
Gross pay and Social Security wages are not always the same, because some payroll items are taxed differently. Using the Social Security wage figure printed on the statement, where there is one, avoids guessing at taxable wages.
No. Regular Medicare withholding has no connection to the Social Security wage ceiling. Medicare wages keep accumulating past the Social Security wage base, and Additional Medicare Tax uses its own employer withholding threshold.
CPP and QPP obligations can begin or end mid-year because of age, disability, elections, or other contribution-month rules. Full payroll engines handle those cases when enough information is available, but this focused checker will not assume a full year applies when you say the status is uncertain.
You can enter any pay date, but the statutory figures loaded here cover 2026 only. A pay date in another year returns Not evaluated instead of applying the wrong year's ceilings or maximums.
No. The checker tests selected payroll arithmetic and nothing more. Whoever receives the document is still responsible for any independent verification, underwriting, screening, or documentation steps their situation requires.