A pay stub is the record an employee keeps of one pay period: gross pay, each deduction, taxes withheld, net pay and the year-to-date totals. The pay stub generator in this group builds one from the figures you enter, and it is meant for employers documenting wages they really paid. A stub for income that was not earned is fraud, and the tool says so beside the inputs where you cannot miss it.
What sets it apart from most pay stub makers is that it calculates the tax rather than printing whatever you type. Federal income tax withholding is worked out with the percentage method from IRS Publication 15-T for 2026, using the filing status and withholding details from the employee’s Form W-4. Social Security and Medicare are calculated at the employee rates, and pre-tax items such as retirement contributions and some insurance premiums are subtracted before tax in the way payroll does it, so they lower the taxable wage where the rules say they do. After-tax deductions come off after the taxes.
The page explains each line in plain words, so you can see why a figure came out as it did. If a pay rate changed part-way through the year, enter the earlier earnings so the year-to-date totals are right, because a stub that assumes the same gross for every earlier period will show the wrong totals. State income tax varies a great deal from place to place, so the tool lets you enter the state amount you have worked out rather than guessing one.
Employers have a legal reason to keep this information. The Department of Labor requires employers to keep payroll records, and many states require a pay statement to be given to employees on each pay day. What a statement must contain varies by state, so check your state labor department, and use the stub as a clean record, not as proof that the pay was filed or deposited. The tool does not file anything and is not payroll software.
It also does not replace one. A payroll provider handles deposits, filings and year-end forms, and a business with employees should have either that service or an accountant. The generator is for the smaller job: a clear stub for a clear payment, a way to check withholding against what your software produced, or a record for a one-off payment.
Everything is built in your browser. The figures you enter are not sent to a server, and the PDF is made on your device. The page shows the tax year it follows, the sources it was built from and the date they were checked, and it says who should not use it. If a figure looks wrong, use the report form on the contact page and the correction will be recorded.