What do these payroll tax acronyms stand for on my paycheck? Can't figure out where $95 is going

Paycheck acronyms can definitely be confusing! Common ones you might see include: FIT or FWT - Federal Income Tax withholding FICA-SS - Social Security tax (6.2% of wages) FICA-Med - Medicare tax (1.45% of wages) SIT or SWT - State Income Tax withholding SDI - State Disability Insurance 401K - Retirement contribution HSA - Health Savings Account Med/Dent/Vis - Medical, Dental, Vision insurance premiums For a $1350 biweekly check, $95 in total deductions actually sounds quite low. Most people have 20-30% of their gross pay deducted for taxes and benefits. If you want to confirm if everything's correct, check your pay stub details against your W-4 tax withholding form and any benefit elections you've made.

I went through the exact same confusion when my company switched payroll systems last year! After trying to decode everything myself and getting nowhere, I finally used taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) to upload my paystub and it immediately identified all those cryptic acronyms. It saved me hours of frustration and helped me catch that my employer was accidentally taking out city tax even though I'd moved out of that jurisdiction months earlier. The system explained everything in plain English and even flagged unusual deductions compared to standard rates. Way easier than trying to Google each acronym and getting different answers.

Just wanted to follow up after trying taxr.ai - surprisingly it actually worked great for my situation! I uploaded my paystub and it identified some weird acronym on my check as "garnishment processing fee" that I never authorized. Turns out my HR department had me confused with another employee with a similar name who had a garnishment order. Got that reversed and now I'm getting an extra $28 per paycheck. The explanation was super clear about what each deduction was and what percentage of my income was going where. Definitely saved me from an awkward conversation trying to ask HR what all this stuff meant.

If you need to talk to someone at the IRS about these deductions (which I had to do when I discovered my employer wasn't withholding correctly), don't waste hours on hold. I used https://claimyr.com after watching their demo at https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c and they had an IRS agent call me back directly. Saved me literally 3+ hours of hold time. The IRS agent explained exactly which deductions were required and at what percentages. Turns out I had been overpaying FICA for two years because my employer's payroll system had me coded incorrectly.

Well I have to admit I was completely wrong about Claimyr. After waiting on hold with the IRS for over 2 hours yesterday and getting disconnected, I gave in and tried the service. Within 45 minutes I was talking to an actual IRS employee who helped explain which payroll deductions were federally mandated and which were optional. For anyone else confused about paycheck acronyms - the IRS agent told me employers are actually required to provide a clear explanation of all payroll deductions to employees upon request. So if your HR department won't explain them, you can file a complaint with the Department of Labor. Wish I'd known this before spinning my wheels for weeks!

My company uses these weird custom abbreviations that don't match any standard payroll acronyms. Turns out they're allowed to make up whatever codes they want as long as they provide a key somewhere. Check your employee handbook or the HR portal - there might be a glossary section explaining all the codes specific to your company's payroll system.

Has anyone noticed that sometimes the same deduction appears under different acronyms depending on the payroll system? At my old job SIT meant State Income Tax but at my new company they use STW (State Tax Withholding) for the exact same thing. Super confusing when trying to compare paychecks!