Virginia Paystub Rules, Pay Frequency and Withholding

What Virginia’s Paystub Law Requires on Every Pay Date

Virginia sorts its payroll obligations by how a worker is paid rather than by what the worker does. Whether your employer may pay you monthly, and whether your pay statement has to carry an hours line, both turn on the hourly-versus-salaried question and, in one narrow case, on how far above the state average weekly wage your earnings sit.

Underneath it sits Code 40.1-29, the wage payment statute, which since the start of 2020 has required a written statement on every regular pay date rather than only when an employee asks for one.

The Five Elements a Virginia Written Statement Must List

Employers, excepting agricultural, agribusiness and forestry operations, must give each employee a written statement or online accounting on each regular pay date. Five elements are named.

Employer Name and Address

The business that owes the wages has to be identifiable from the document itself.

Hours Worked During the Pay Period

Required for some employees and not for others, on the test set out in the next section.

Rate of Pay

The per hour or per period figure the earnings were built from.

Gross Wages Earned in the Period

Total pay before any tax or voluntary deduction is applied.

Amount and Purpose of Any Deductions

Both halves are named in the code: how much came out, and what it went toward.

The statute then adds the test that governs the rest: the statement must contain sufficient information for the employee to determine how gross and net pay were calculated. Two documents can list all five items and only one survive that sentence.

Does Every Virginia Employee Get an Hours Line?

Element two is conditional. Hours worked must appear for employees paid hourly, and for salaried employees not exempt from overtime under 29 U.S.C. 213(a)(1). An exempt salaried professional in Roanoke needs no hours line; a non-exempt salaried coordinator does. Enforcement runs through the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry.

What Changes for Pay Stub Records on 1 July 2026

Effective 1 July 2026, 2026 Va. Acts c. 1040 widened employer to reach any person acting in an employer’s interest, widened wages to cover salary, overtime, commissions, tips and bonuses, wrote a three-year retention period for paystubs and equivalent online records into the code, and gave the Attorney General authority to act for workers.

Virginia Pay Frequency Law: How Often Wages Are Due

The same hourly-versus-salaried split sets the minimum payroll interval, with two narrow exceptions written into the statute.

Minimum Pay Frequency by Worker Type

What the Frequency Rules Mean in Practice

Hourly and Salaried Staff on the Same Norfolk Payroll

Two salaried employees at a Norfolk company can therefore sit on a different legal minimum from two hourly employees beside them.

When a Final Paycheck Is Due After Separation

On separation, wages earned are due on or before the date the employee would have been paid had employment not ended, which is Virginia’s final paycheck rule: the next regular payday, not a fixed number of days.

The Floor Under a Virginia Hourly Rate

The 2026 Minimum Wage and How It Is Adjusted

The Virginia minimum wage is $12.77 an hour from 1 January 2026 until 1 January 2027, set under the adjustment mechanism in Code 40.1-28.10 and announced by the Department of Labor and Industry. It came from applying the 2.9 percent Consumer Price Index increase to the 2025 rate of $12.41, and the same method carries forward annually.

How Overtime Has Worked in Virginia Since 2022

Overtime falls under Code 40.1-29.2, which since 2022 applies federal Fair Labor Standards Act rules, exemptions and calculation methods rather than a separate Virginia standard.

What Comes Out of a Virginia Paycheck

Virginia levies income tax at the state level only. No city or county wage tax exists anywhere in the Commonwealth, so a paycheck stub issued in Alexandria and one issued in Bristol carry the same tax layers.

Virginia Income Tax Rates on Wage Income

Those thresholds come from Code 58.1-320 and have applied to taxable years beginning on or after 1 January 1990. They are not indexed, which is why the top rate reaches ordinary salaries. The standard deduction is $8,750 single and $17,500 married for taxable years 2025 and 2026, and each personal exemption is worth $930.

A Richmond Worked Example on a $63,000 Salary

A salaried employee earning $63,000 a year, paid monthly at $5,250, claiming one personal exemption:

• $63,000 less the $8,750 standard deduction and one $930 exemption gives Virginia taxable income of $53,320.
• First $3,000 at 2 percent: $60.
• Next $2,000 at 3 percent: $60, running total $120.
• Next $12,000 at 5 percent: $600, running total $720.
• Remaining $36,320 at 5.75 percent: $2,088.40.
• Annual Virginia tax: $2,808.40, or about $234 a month.

Why 5.75 Percent Is Not the Rate You Actually Pay

The marginal rate is 5.75 percent but the effective rate on the full salary is roughly 4.5 percent, so applying 5.75 percent across the whole paycheck over-withholds by several hundred dollars a year. Employers capture exemptions on Form VA-4, remit quarterly, monthly or semi-weekly depending on liability, and reconcile on Form VA-6 by 31 January. Run your own figures through the Virginia paycheck calculator.

Who Pays Virginia Unemployment Insurance

Unemployment insurance is an employer cost in Virginia, charged on the first $8,000 of each employee’s annual wages and reported to the Virginia Employment Commission. It produces no employee deduction, so a UI line on a Virginia pay statement is an error.

Virginia Check Stub Codes and What They Mean

Abbreviations fall into two groups: the statutory tax lines, which mean the same thing on every Virginia payroll, and everything else.

Tax and Retirement Codes on a Virginia Paycheck Stub

Which Payroll Stub Labels Are Set by Your Provider

Labels for voluntary items vary by provider. Where a code is not one of the statutory tax lines, check it against the plan document rather than assuming.

Where Virginia Paystub Compliance Usually Fails

The recurring failures are narrow.

Errors on the Face of the Statement

Statements showing gross and net but no hours for hourly staff. Deductions bundled into one total with no purpose stated. Treating 5.75 percent as a flat rate.

Errors in Pay Timing and Record Retention

Paying a salaried employee monthly is lawful; paying an hourly employee monthly is not, and that error usually arrives with an out-of-state payroll setup. Discarding records before the three-year mark is the other half of the problem.

Using Virginia Wage Records Responsibly

The statement your employer issues is evidence of wages actually earned. The retention duty now sits on the employer in the code, but your own file is what lets you check a rate change or a deduction you did not authorize. If a statement is missing or wrong, the route is a complaint to the Department of Labor and Industry, not a substitute document you produce yourself.

Where to Go Next in the Virginia Payroll Guide

• Virginia paystub generator: build a statement that itemizes hours and rate the way 40.1-29 expects.
• Virginia paycheck calculator: run the graduated brackets against your own gross pay.
• Virginia income tax: filing thresholds, subtractions and credits beyond withholding.
• Virginia sales tax: the 5.3 percent general rate, the 6 percent Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and Central Virginia rate, and the 7 percent Historic Triangle rate.