How to Spot a Fake Paystub or W-2 With Arithmetic: The Withholding Math Forgers Get Wrong
A fabricated paystub can carry the right logo, the right font and a plausible salary, and still fail a check any underwriter can run with a calculator: Social Security is 6.2% of Social Security wages up to the wage base, Medicare is 1.45% plus 0.9% above $200,000, and a W-2's boxes have to agree with each other. The statutory withholding tests that catch income fraud, why a 401(k) and a cafeteria plan change the math, where the checks produce false positives, and how an AI agent runs them on every stub instead of the ones that look wrong.