Multi-Order Wage Garnishment & CCPA Withholding Calculator

What are disposable earnings, and how are they different from net pay?

Disposable earnings are gross pay minus deductions required by law. That's it. Federal, state and local income tax, the employee's share of Social Security and Medicare, state unemployment insurance where it applies, and retirement withholding that statute mandates.

Everything else stays in. Health insurance premiums, 401(k) contributions, union dues, charitable giving, savings bonds, repayment of a payroll advance — none of it reduces disposable earnings, even though all of it reduces the employee's take-home pay.

This is the single most expensive mistake in garnishment processing, and it's easy to make because the number you're staring at in the payroll system is net pay. In the calculator's defaults, gross is $1,800 and legally required deductions are $374.70, so disposable earnings are $1,425.30. Voluntary deductions take another $240, so net pay is $1,185.30. Compute the 25% ceiling off net pay and you get $296.33 instead of $356.33 — you under-withhold by $60 every period, and the employer becomes liable for the shortfall.

Two related traps. Tips are generally not considered earnings under the CCPA, so they shouldn't be in the gross figure at all — at least one competing calculator says the opposite. And commissions and bonuses are earnings, so they belong in gross even though they arrive irregularly.

How do I calculate wage garnishment when there are multiple orders?

You compute disposable earnings once, derive one ceiling, then run the orders in priority sequence and let each one consume capacity from the same pool. Orders don't each get their own 25%.

Walk the defaults. Disposable earnings are $1,425.30 on a biweekly period. The protected floor is 30 × $7.25 × 2 = $435. Two tests: 25% of disposable is $356.33, and the excess over the floor is $990.30. The ordinary ceiling is the lesser — $356.33.

Now sequence:

• Support takes $300. It isn't limited by the $356.33 — support runs on its own 50% cap, which here is $712.65. But the $300 it takes does consume ordinary capacity.
• Federal tax levy takes $85.30, being net pay less the Publication 1494 exempt amount of $1,100. Levies aren't subject to CCPA restrictions at all.
• Student loan AWG demands $213.80. Three tests apply and the smallest wins: the order amount, 15% of disposable ($213.80), and the residual capacity of 25% of disposable less priority withholdings — $356.33 − $300 − $85.30, which is negative, so zero.
• Two consumer orders demanding $300 and $250 get zero, for the same reason.

Result: $1,149.10 demanded, $385.30 withheld, three of five orders paid nothing. Notify each issuing court or agency that higher-priority orders exhausted the available amount, and document it.

What order do I pay multiple garnishments in?

The working hierarchy is:

1. Bankruptcy orders
2. Child support and alimony
3. Federal tax levies
4. Federal student loan AWG and other federal agency debts
5. Ordinary consumer judgments

Within that, the details bite. Among federal tax levies, the oldest effective date wins. A child support order that already exists outranks a newly arriving federal levy, but an existing levy outranks a newly arriving support order — the sequence of arrival matters, not just the category.

Same-priority consumer orders are genuinely unsettled. Some payroll guidance says split the available room proportionally between equal-priority creditors; other guidance says the first order served is paid in full and the second waits until the first is satisfied. These are different answers and both are published by credible sources. The calculator defaults to first-served and gives you a toggle, because guessing on your behalf would be worse than showing you both.

Two things worth being blunt about. DOL doesn't resolve priority disputes. The Wage and Hour Division states plainly that questions about the priority given to certain garnishments over others aren't covered by Title III and should go to the court or agency that issued the order. This calculator computes the ceiling and the arithmetic; it does not adjudicate who wins a contested priority fight.

And bankruptcy orders are not modeled here. They take first priority and are exempt from CCPA restrictions entirely. If one is in force, compute it separately and treat the remaining capacity as reduced before using this tool.

Can wage garnishment ever exceed 25% of a paycheck?

Yes, and the calculator's defaults show it: total withholding is $385.30 on disposable earnings of $1,425.30, which is 27.03% — above 25%, and entirely lawful.

The 25% figure applies only to ordinary garnishments — consumer judgments, and federal non-tax debts like defaulted student loans. Three categories sit outside it.

So the ceiling is asymmetric. Support and levies can push total withholding well past 25%, but the moment they do, they've also eliminated any room for consumer creditors — because the amounts already withheld count against the ordinary ceiling even though they aren't bound by it.

DOL's own Example 6 is the cleanest illustration. Weekly disposable earnings of $295, a support order taking $90, and a student loan order arriving. The ordinary maximum is $73.75. The $90 support withholding is fine on its own authority. The student loan gets nothing, because more than $73.75 has already been withheld. Total garnishment: 30.5% of the paycheck, fully compliant.

Federal or state garnishment limits — which one applies?

Whichever leaves the employee with more money. If a state garnishment law differs from the CCPA, the law producing the smaller garnishment must be observed.

That's easy to state and easy to get wrong, because the comparison runs on two variables, not one. States can set a lower percentage cap, a higher protected floor, or both. California uses 40 times the state minimum wage rather than 30 times the federal — flip the state inputs in the calculator to $16.50 and a multiple of 40 and the biweekly ceiling collapses from $356.33 to $105.30. Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina bar wage garnishment for ordinary consumer debt almost entirely, though that protection doesn't extend to support, taxes, or federal student loans.

The calculator takes the state minimum wage, the multiple, and the percentage cap as inputs rather than shipping a fifty-state table. That's deliberate: state minimum wages change every January, and a hardcoded table would be quietly wrong within a year. Enter your state's current figures and the more-protective rule is applied for you.

One exception that surprises people: federal student loan AWG is subject to federal garnishment law but not state garnishment law. So even where a state limit controls the consumer orders, the AWG residual test still runs against the federal 25%. The calculator models it that way.

Also note the federal minimum wage for garnishment purposes is $7.25 regardless of your state's rate — the state figure only matters if your state law uses it.