How Much of My Paycheck Can Be Garnished?

For an ordinary debt — a credit card, a medical bill, a personal loan — federal law caps a wage garnishment at the lesser of 25% of your disposable earnings or the amount by which those earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage ($217.50 a week). Whichever figure is smaller is the most a creditor can take, and everything below the $217.50 floor is always protected. Some debts run higher: child support can reach 50–60% of disposable earnings, federal student loans up to 15%, and unpaid federal taxes follow an IRS exemption table instead of a percentage. Many states shield even more.

A garnishment notice is alarming precisely because it feels open-ended — as if a creditor could empty your account. It cannot. The rules that govern how much of a paycheck can be taken are set by Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA), enforced by the US Department of Labor, and they draw a hard line under a portion of every check. Here is exactly how that line is calculated.

Start With Disposable Earnings, Not Take-Home Pay

Every garnishment limit is a percentage of your disposable earnings, and that is a specific legal term — not the net pay on your stub. Per US Department of Labor Fact Sheet #30, disposable earnings are your gross pay minus the deductions the law requires:

• Federal, state, and local income tax
• Social Security and Medicare (FICA)
• Mandatory state unemployment or disability withholding

Voluntary deductions do not come out first. Your 401(k) contribution, health and dental premiums, union dues, and charitable giving are all ignored when disposable earnings are figured, so your disposable earnings are usually higher than the take-home number you are used to seeing. If you want to see how those two figures diverge on your own check, our guide to gross pay vs net pay walks through each layer, and a garnishment line itself shows up as a post-tax deduction — see how to read a pay stub.

The 25% / 30x Rule for Ordinary Debts

For most consumer debts — credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, and money judgments — the CCPA sets the ceiling at the lesser of two numbers:

• 25% of your disposable earnings for that pay period, or
• the amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage ($7.25 × 30 = $217.50 per week).

The second number builds in a protected floor. If your weekly disposable earnings are $217.50 or less, nothing can be garnished. Between $217.50 and $290, only the amount above $217.50 can be taken. At $290 or more per week, the 25% cap becomes the binding limit. Because the floor is tied to a weekly figure, it scales with your pay frequency:

Worked example. Say your disposable earnings are $600 for a one-week pay period. The 25% figure is $150. The “amount over $217.50” figure is $600 − $217.50 = $382.50. The creditor takes the lesser, so the garnishment is $150 and you keep $450. If instead you earned $260 disposable that week, 25% would be $65, but the amount over the floor is only $42.50 — so just $42.50 could be taken.

Different Debts, Different Limits

The 25% rule is only the default. Several categories of debt override it with their own caps, and priority debts are taken before ordinary creditors get anything.

Two notes on the outliers. Child support is the one place the law lets a large majority of a check be taken, because it is treated as the highest social priority. And a federal IRS levy works backwards from the others: rather than capping what the IRS can take, Publication 1494 defines an amount that is exempt (based on your standard deduction, dependents, and pay frequency) and the IRS can levy everything above it.

Your State May Protect More

The CCPA is a floor, not a ceiling — states are free to shield a larger share of wages, and when federal and state limits conflict, the one that protects more of your paycheck wins. Several states are far more protective than the federal 25%:

• Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina prohibit wage garnishment for most ordinary consumer debts entirely (child support, taxes, and student loans still apply).
• New York caps ordinary garnishments at 10% of gross income in many cases.
• Many states raise the protected floor above $217.50 to track a higher state minimum wage.

Because the state rules vary so widely, the federal maximum is best read as a worst case. Your actual exposure could be much lower depending on where you work.

Can You Be Fired Over It?

For a single debt, no. Title III makes it illegal for an employer to fire you because your wages are garnished for any one debt, however many times that order is levied. The protection does not extend to a second, separate garnishment under federal law, though some states fill that gap. If a garnishment has you rethinking your overall debt load, our sister site’s guide to the debt snowball vs avalanche methods lays out how to prioritize paying it down.

Sources and Methodology

Garnishment limits and the definition of disposable earnings: US Department of Labor — Wage Garnishment and Fact Sheet #30: The Federal Wage Garnishment Law, Consumer Credit Protection Act’s Title III (the 25% / 30x-minimum-wage rule, child support 50–65% caps, and the anti-firing protection). Federal IRS levy exemptions: IRS Publication 1494. The federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour is used for the 30x protected-floor math. State-specific limits come from individual state labor and garnishment statutes and can exceed these federal protections. Last updated July 20, 2026.