FICA is not a tax. It is the law that authorizes two of them, and the line on your stub is those two added together: 7.65% of your pay. What makes it worth understanding is that it behaves nothing like the income tax line above it. Your W-4 cannot touch it, and it never comes back in April.
FICA is a law, not a deduction
The Federal Insurance Contributions Act is the 1935 statute that lets your employer take Social Security and Medicare out of your pay. Two separate taxes ride on it:
- Social Security at 6.2% of your wages.
- Medicare at 1.45%.
- Together, 7.65%, which is the figure most people mean when they say FICA.
That is the whole of it, and it explains why the line has so many different names. Some payroll systems print one combined FICA line. Others split it in two. Others use the underlying program names and never write FICA at all.
How it shows up on a pay stub
| What you might see | What it is | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| FICA, FICA EE | Both taxes on one line | 7.65% |
| FICA-SS, FICA-OASDI, OASDI, SS, Soc Sec | Social Security only | 6.2% |
| FICA-MED, Fed MED/EE, Fed MWT/EE, Medicare | Medicare only | 1.45% |
| Anything ending /ER | Your employer’s half | not deducted from you |
The /EE suffix means employee and /ER means employer. If you want to work out which line is which without knowing the code, divide it by your gross: 6.2%, 1.45% or 7.65% names it immediately. OASDI on your pay stub covers the Social Security half in detail, and Fed MED/EE and Fed MWT/EE covers the Medicare half.
Your employer pays the same again
For every dollar of FICA that comes off your check, your employer pays a matching dollar that never appears on your stub. You contribute 7.65%, they contribute 7.65%, and 15.3% of your wages goes into the two programs in total.
If you are self-employed there is no employer to split it with, so you pay both halves yourself at 15.3% under a parallel law called SECA. The tax code softens that with a deduction, but the headline rate is genuinely double what an employee sees, and it is the single biggest surprise for people going independent for the first time. A freelance rate has to be built to absorb it, which is why converting a salary one for one into an hourly figure comes up short.
Your W-4 cannot change it, and you do not get it back
This is the part that causes the most confusion, because the line directly above FICA on your stub behaves in exactly the opposite way.
- Federal income tax withholding is an estimate. It moves with your W-4, and whatever was over-collected comes back as a refund.
- FICA is not an estimate. It is 7.65% of your wages, full stop. There is no allowance, no dependent credit and no exempt box that reduces it, and there is no refund at the end of the year because nothing was estimated.
- A few narrow categories of worker are exempt by statute, such as some students employed by the school they attend. That is a feature of the job rather than something you can elect.
On $2,500 of gross pay, $191.25 comes off as FICA whatever your W-4 says: $155.00 of Social Security and $36.25 of Medicare. Change your filing status, add dependents, claim extra withholding, and that $191.25 does not move by a cent.
There is one real exception. If you worked two jobs in a year and earned more than the Social Security wage base between them, too much Social Security came out, and that excess is refundable as a credit on your return. It is the only way FICA comes back.
What the 7.65% actually buys
Unlike income tax, which goes into general revenue, FICA buys you specific entitlements measured in credits. You need 40 credits, roughly ten years of work, to qualify for Social Security retirement benefits at all.
Credits are far cheaper than most people assume. In 2026 you earn one credit for every $1,890 of wages, and you cannot earn more than four in a year however much you make. So $7,560 of earnings buys all four credits for the year. Somebody working part time for $7,560 and somebody earning $500,000 both bank exactly four credits, and both are ten years from qualifying. Credits decide whether you qualify. Your actual earnings decide how much you get, which is a separate calculation entirely.
Those same credits are doing more than funding a pension you may feel is a long way off:
- Disability cover, if illness or injury stops you working. How many credits you need depends on how old you are when it happens, so a younger worker needs fewer.
- Survivor benefits for your family if you die, which is the part of Social Security almost nobody counts as theirs.
- Medicare eligibility, which the Medicare half of the line is buying directly.
When the amount does change
The rate never changes, but the base it applies to does, and the two halves behave differently.
- Social Security stops once your wages for the year reach $184,500 in 2026. High earners watch that 6.2% vanish part way through the year and their checks grow.
- Medicare never stops, and above $200,000 it gets larger, because an extra 0.9% surtax starts.
- A health premium reduces it. Section 125 deductions come out before FICA is figured, so your 7.65% is calculated on gross minus those. A 401(k) contribution comes out after, so it does not reduce FICA at all.
The take-home pay calculator shows both FICA lines for your first check of the year alongside the annual totals, which is the quickest way to check yours against your stub.
Frequently asked
The Federal Insurance Contributions Act, which is the law that lets your employer withhold Social Security and Medicare. The line is those two combined: 6.2 percent plus 1.45 percent, or 7.65 percent of your wages. Some stubs split it into two lines and some print it as one.
7.65 percent of your gross wages, less any Section 125 health premium. On $2,500 of gross that is $191.25, made up of $155.00 of Social Security and $36.25 of Medicare. Your employer pays the same again, so 15.3 percent goes into the two programs in total.
No. Unlike income tax withholding, FICA is not an estimate, so there is nothing to true up and no refund. Your W-4 does not affect it and there is no exempt box for it. The one exception is working two jobs and going over the Social Security wage base between them, where the excess is refundable on your return.
Federal income tax is an estimate of what you will owe, set by your W-4 and settled when you file. FICA is a fixed percentage that funds Social Security and Medicare specifically, and it buys you credits toward those programs. The two lines sit next to each other on a stub and behave in completely opposite ways.
Social Security retirement, disability cover, survivor benefits for your family, and Medicare. You need 40 credits, around ten years of work, to qualify for retirement benefits. In 2026 one credit costs $1,890 of earnings and you can earn at most four a year, so $7,560 of wages banks a full year of credits.
EE means employee, so FICA EE is your half of the contribution. If you also see a line ending /ER, that is your employer's matching half, shown for information. It is not deducted from your pay.