State-specific rules, deduction rates, and compliance guides.
Federal payroll rules are the same everywhere - FICA rates, the deadlines for W-2 and 1099-NEC filing, and the recordkeeping duty under the Fair Labor Standards Act don't change at a state line. What does change is everything layered on top: state income tax, whether an itemized pay stub is required at all, how it can be delivered, and how quickly a final paycheck has to be paid after termination.
These guides break down what's actually federal versus what's state-specific, so an employer running payroll in more than one state - or an employee trying to figure out whether their stub is missing something required - knows which rule applies where.
This guide is part of our Payroll & Tax service — pay stubs, W-2s and payroll compliance tools.
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Social Security and Medicare withholding rates, the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime framework, and the recordkeeping requirement to keep payroll records for at least three years are federal and apply uniformly. Federal income tax withholding, based on Form W-4, is also uniform in mechanism even though the resulting withholding differs by income and elections.
Everything else is state law: whether an employee has a right to a written, itemized pay stub at all - the FLSA imposes no such requirement itself - how detailed that stub must be, whether electronic-only delivery is allowed without the employee's consent, state and local income tax rates (several states charge none), and state-specific deductions like disability or paid family leave contributions.
Some states require a detailed, itemized statement with specific line items spelled out in the statute. Others require nothing beyond what an employer chooses to provide. Where a written or printable stub is required, several states also address consent for electronic-only delivery directly - an employer switching to a paperless system in one of those states without employee consent can be out of compliance even if the payroll math is perfect.
This is why a template built for one state can be legally incomplete in another: the deductions and tax math might be identical, but the required disclosures on the document itself are not.
How quickly a final paycheck must be issued after an employee quits or is fired is set entirely by state law, and the timing frequently differs depending on whether the employee quit voluntarily or was terminated. Some states require immediate or near-immediate payment on termination; others allow it to wait until the next regular payday. There is no single federal deadline governing this at all.
Employers operating in multiple states have to track this per state rather than applying one internal policy company-wide, because a policy compliant in one location can trigger a penalty in another.
A handful of states impose no state income tax at all, which changes what a pay stub looks like even for identical gross pay and identical federal withholding. States that do impose income tax set their own withholding tables, and some layer on additional mandatory payroll deductions - state disability insurance or paid family and medical leave contributions - that show up as their own line separate from federal FICA and income tax.
None of this changes the federal side of the stub: Social Security at 6.2% each side up to the wage base and Medicare at 1.45% uncapped apply the same everywhere. What changes is everything state-specific stacked underneath it, which is exactly why a stub generated for one state needs to reflect that state's rules rather than a generic template.
It depends on the state you work in. The FLSA requires employers to keep accurate payroll records but doesn't itself require handing an itemized statement to the employee - that's a state-law requirement, and it varies in whether it applies at all and how detailed the stub must be.
In some states, yes, without restriction. Other states require the employee's consent before switching to electronic-only pay stub delivery, and some require that the employee be able to print the stub at no cost. The rule depends on the state where the work is performed.
No. A handful of states impose no state income tax at all, which is why two people with identical gross pay and identical federal withholding can have very different net pay depending on which state they work in.
There's no federal deadline - it's set entirely by state law, and many states set different deadlines depending on whether the employee quit or was terminated. Some require payment immediately or within a day or two; others allow it to wait until the next scheduled payday.
Yes. FICA is a federal tax - 6.2% for Social Security up to the annual wage base and 1.45% for Medicare with no cap, both matched by the employer - and those rates don't change based on the state where someone works.
Depending on the state, you may see state disability insurance or paid family and medical leave contributions as their own line items, separate from federal FICA and income tax withholding. Not every state has these, and the ones that do set their own rates.
