Tools · Wage Garnishment
Iowa Wage Garnishment Calculator (2026)
Enter your disposable pay to see the most a creditor could take in Iowa (25% weekly, capped per year), the pay that stays protected, and which rule sets the limit.
Iowa wage garnishment calculator
Disposable earnings is your pay after legally required deductions: federal and state taxes, Social Security, and Medicare. It is close to your take-home pay, before voluntary deductions like a 401(k) or health premiums.
The Iowa rule and the federal ceiling land on the same figure here, so either way this is the most a creditor could take.
These are the Iowa figures applied to what you entered: a plain summary of the limits, not a determination that any garnishment is correct or incorrect. Court orders set the actual withholding.
The figure above is the most the percentage caps allow. Iowa also protects a set amount of pay outright, and this calculator cannot pin that floor to one dollar figure. Weekly disposable pay up to $217.50 (30 times the $7.25 federal minimum wage) is fully protected under the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act, which Iowa Code §642.21 adopts. On top of that weekly floor, an annual dollar cap limits what each creditor can take across the whole year.
- Most a creditor could take
- Up to $200 per paycheck
- Disposable pay entered
- $800 weekly
- Iowa rule
- 25% cap: $200
- Federal ceiling
- 25% / $217.50 floor: $200
Plain-language summary, not legal advice.
Informational only, not legal advice. Garnishment limits carry exceptions this summary cannot weigh (support orders, taxes, student loans, existing court orders), and exemptions often must be claimed by a deadline. See the full rules, the exemption steps, and the citations on the Iowa wage garnishment reference, cited to Iowa Code §642.21.
How wage garnishment works in Iowa
Iowa uses the federal 25% weekly ceiling, but it also caps the total a single creditor can take from you in one calendar year on a sliding scale, from $250 a year if you earn under $12,000 up to 10% of your pay if you earn $50,000 or more.
Two limits run at the same time in Iowa. The weekly limit is the federal one: the lesser of 25% of disposable pay or the amount above $217.50 a week. Separately, Iowa Code §642.21 sets an annual dollar ceiling per creditor based on your expected earnings for that calendar year, which the sheriff or court determines from your answers under Iowa Code §642.5. The brackets do not stack across creditors within a single garnishment, but each judgment creditor gets its own yearly cap. Support orders, chapter 252D actions, and certain other proceedings are excepted from the $250 base cap.
This calculator shows the Iowa figures applied to your own pay. It is informational only and not legal advice: support orders, taxes, and student loans follow their own rules, and exemptions often must be claimed by a short deadline. For the full rule, the exemption steps, and the citations, see the Iowa wage garnishment reference, cited to Iowa Code §642.21.
Wage garnishment calculators for other states
Same tool, each with its own cap and protected floor.