Student Loan Wage Garnishment Calculator
Estimate how much a defaulted federal student loan can take from each paycheck. The limit is 15% of disposable pay — a legal term that is neither your gross pay nor your take-home — subject to a protected floor low-wage borrowers keep no matter what, and a combined cap when other garnishments are already running. Most garnishment calculators get at least one of those wrong; this one shows you which limit is actually binding and why. Department-held collections are paused as of August 20, 2026 — the calculator says what garnishment would take when it resumes.
Estimate a federal student loan wage garnishment as the lesser of 15% of disposable pay or the amount above the CCPA protected-earnings floor, with panels for exact pay-stub figures, stacked garnishment orders, the 12-month reemployment protection, the 30-day hearing window, and the effect on the defaulted balance. A two-question gate keeps private-loan and benefit-offset visitors from receiving a legally wrong wage figure.
Your numbers appear here
Answer the questions on the left and you'll see the estimated garnishment per paycheck, what's left after it, and — the part most calculators skip — which of the legal limits is actually setting the number.
If garnishment can't lawfully touch this paycheck at all, that's the headline instead.
Is Wage Garnishment Happening Right Now?
It depends on who holds the loan, which is why the calculator asks. Department-held loans: ED announced a return to garnishment in December 2025, mailed the first notices in January 2026, then paused involuntary collections on January 16, 2026 — before any wages were withheld — and the pause remains in place as of August 20, 2026, with no announced restart. The legal authority is intact. Treat this as a window, not a shield: collection can resume with little warning, and the borrowers who use the window to exit default are the ones the restart cannot touch.
Guaranty-agency (FFEL) loans: nothing extends the pause to guaranty agencies, and their regulations affirmatively require them to pursue wage garnishment against all eligible defaulted borrowers. If a guaranty agency holds your loan, garnishment is available to it now. Check the holder at StudentAid.gov, or call the Default Resolution Group at 1-800-621-3115. The garnishment timeline guide walks through what happens, in what order, once collection starts.
How the 15% Limit Actually Works
Three rules stack, and the borrower gets the benefit of whichever takes less:
15% of disposable pay (20 U.S.C. § 1095a(a)(1)) — not gross, not take-home. Disposable pay subtracts income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and health insurance premiums. It does not subtract a 401(k), an HSA, or other garnishments — so take-home pay understates it, and a straight 15%-of-paycheck calculator gets the wrong number in whichever direction you feed it.
The protected floor (15 U.S.C. § 1673(a)(2)) — 30 times the $7.25 federal minimum wage per week is untouchable: $217.50 weekly, $435 biweekly, $471.25 semimonthly, $942.50 monthly. Only the excess above the floor may be taken when that is less than 15%.
$0 below the floor — disposable pay at or under the protected amount cannot be garnished at all. The order can still issue and waits for pay to rise.
A worked example, paid monthly: at $2,000 of disposable pay, 15% is $300 and the floor leaves $1,057.50 exposed — so the garnishment is $300. At $1,000, 15% would be $150, but only $57.50 sits above the $942.50 floor — so the garnishment is $57.50, and a calculator that only knows the 15% rule overstates it almost threefold. At $900, nothing can be taken. The floor governs until disposable pay reaches about $1,109 a month — a crossover specific to the student-loan 15% rate that generic garnishment calculators, built for the 25% consumer rule, place at the wrong income.
When 15% Is Not the Number
The widely repeated "25% garnishment cap" is not the student-loan rate and never has been. When orders stack, 25% of disposable pay is a ceiling on the combined total, measured after priority withholdings come out — a residual, not a rate. Three consequences follow:
A child-support order can zero the student-loan garnishment. Support is paid first whenever it was served. On $2,000 of monthly disposable pay, the combined ceiling is $500 — a $600 support order consumes it entirely, and the student-loan order collects nothing while support runs. The calculator produces exactly this result, and no competing calculator does.
The total can also exceed 25%. Support orders and tax levies sit outside the 25% cap — support alone can lawfully reach 50–65% of disposable pay, and an IRS levy follows its own exempt-amount table. The 25% figure limits the stacking of ordinary garnishments; it is not a promise about your paycheck.
And 15% is not always the ceiling for student loans themselves. Orders from one holder are capped at 15% combined — but a borrower whose defaulted loans sit with two different guaranty agencies can lawfully be garnished above 15%, up to the general limit. Who holds each loan decides which rule applies, which is why the calculator shows a range when it cannot know.
How to Stop a Wage Garnishment
Within 30 days of the notice: request the hearing. A request postmarked or received within 30 days of the notice date blocks the order until a written decision issues. (The statute says 15 days; the regulations and the Department both give 30 — plan on 30, but do not cut it close.) Hardship is the only basis for challenging the amount, it is benchmarked to the IRS Collection Financial Standards, and a reduction lasts at most six months per determination — the Department's site says twelve, but the regulation says six, so plan on six and treat twelve as the surprise. The hardship hearing guide covers how to document it.
The durable exit is rehabilitation. Nine on-time payments returns the loan to good standing — but know the 2026 rule: garnishment continues through your first four rehabilitation payments and is stopped only after the fifth qualifying payment (rescinded for Direct Loans, suspended for FFEL). For those months you pay both. The suspension is available once before July 1, 2027, and twice per loan after, for Direct Loans — FFEL still allows it once. Price the payments with the rehabilitation calculator. Starting rehabilitation inside the 30-day notice window, before an order issues, avoids the overlap entirely.
Consolidation only works before the order lands. Once a garnishment order is in place, the loan is not eligible for consolidation until the order is lifted — the reverse of the usual advice that rehab and consolidation are interchangeable exits. If you have a notice in hand and no order yet, consolidating out of default is still on the table; once withholding starts, rehabilitation is the practical route. The comparison is laid out in rehabilitation vs. consolidation, and stopping a garnishment after it starts covers the whole sequence, including bankruptcy's automatic stay.
Two protections people miss: if you were involuntarily separated from work, nothing may be garnished until you have been continuously reemployed for 12 months — but you must raise it in writing; the Department will not detect it. And if you earn too little to garnish, the hardship hearing exists for exactly the borrower the floor is protecting.
Sources and Limitations
The garnishment authority is 20 U.S.C. § 1095a and 31 U.S.C. § 3720D, implemented at 34 CFR Part 34 (ED) and 34 CFR § 682.410(b)(9) (guaranty agencies). The protected floor comes from 15 U.S.C. § 1673 and 29 CFR § 870.10, computed at the $7.25 federal minimum wage. The rehabilitation five-payment rule is 34 CFR § 685.211(f)(11), effective July 1, 2026. The collection-pause status is from Federal Student Aid, verified August 20, 2026.
This calculator estimates one paycheck from one employer. It cannot see the employer's payroll classifications, the service dates that set priority among orders, whether an order has actually issued, or a bankruptcy filing — and it does not predict enforcement timing or hearing outcomes. For the mechanics of the process itself, read the federal AWG guide. Private loans follow different law entirely — see private student loan wage garnishment — and Social Security is reached by offset, not wage garnishment: can Social Security be garnished.
Wage Garnishment Calculator FAQs
Up to 15% of your disposable pay per paycheck — never gross pay, and not your take-home either. Disposable pay is what remains after legally required withholdings (income tax, Social Security, Medicare) and health insurance premiums. On top of the 15% cap, an amount equal to 30 times the federal minimum wage per week ($217.50) is protected outright, and the employer withholds whichever limit produces less. This calculator runs both limits for your actual pay period.
For Department-held loans, no — ED paused wage garnishment on January 16, 2026, and it remains paused as of August 20, 2026, with no announced restart date. The authority is intact, so it can resume with little warning. The pause has not been shown to reach guaranty agencies collecting older FFEL loans, whose regulations direct them to pursue all eligible defaulted borrowers — so if a guaranty agency holds your loan, treat garnishment as available to it now.
Gross pay minus amounts required by law to be withheld — federal, state, and local income tax, Social Security, and Medicare — minus health insurance premiums. It does not subtract a 401(k) or 403(b), an HSA or FSA, life insurance, charitable deductions, or other garnishments. The 401(k) is the trap: it is the deduction people most expect to lower the garnishment, and it does not. Bonuses, commissions, and vacation pay are all included, so a bonus month raises the garnishment.
If your disposable pay is at or below 30 times the federal minimum wage per week — $217.50 weekly, $435 biweekly, $471.25 semimonthly, $942.50 monthly — nothing can be withheld. But the order can still lawfully issue, and it stays in place: the employer must start withholding whenever your pay rises above the floor. A $0 result today is not protection from the order itself.
No. The protected floor is set by the federal minimum wage — $7.25 since 2009 — and the garnishment statute applies notwithstanding any state law. State garnishment caps and state exemption statutes do not limit federal student-loan wage garnishment. Generic garnishment calculators are usually built around state law, which is one reason their numbers differ from this one.
In three situations, yes. If you signed a written consent to a larger amount, the 15% cap does not bind. If two different guaranty agencies each hold defaulted loans, each can issue its own order and the combined total is limited only by the general 25%-or-protected-floor rule. And where a child-support order or tax levy is also running, those sit outside the 25% combined cap entirely — support withholding alone can lawfully reach 50–65% of disposable pay, so the total leaving the check can exceed 25% even though the student-loan share shrinks.
No. An administrative wage garnishment order runs against the borrower's own employer and the borrower's own pay. Your spouse's paycheck is not reachable for your federal student loan, and their employer receives no order. Endorsers on an older FFEL loan are the exception — the guaranty-agency rule treats endorsers as borrowers.
Since July 1, 2026, amounts collected by wage garnishment or Treasury offset can be credited toward IBR forgiveness in defined circumstances — a genuinely surprising rule at 34 CFR § 685.209(k)(5). It is credit under IBR only, and it is no reason to stay in garnishment: the same dollars exit default entirely through rehabilitation or, before an order issues, consolidation.
A hearing request postmarked or received within 30 days of the notice date blocks the order from issuing until a written decision comes back. The statute says 15 days, but the regulations and the Department both give 30 — the 30-day figure is the operative one. After the window, you can still request a hearing, but withholding is not paused while it is decided unless the delay was outside your control. Hardship is the only basis for objecting to the amount, it is benchmarked to the IRS Collection Financial Standards, and a reduction lasts at most six months per determination.
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