What Counts as Income for Child Support

Child support statutes define income broadly so it cannot be dodged by relabeling money. Texas Family Code section 154.062 is typical: wages, salary, commissions, overtime, tips, and bonuses all count, and so do interest, dividends, royalties, rental income, severance, pensions, unemployment benefits, disability payments, and spousal maintenance received. Florida’s list in section 61.30(2) runs just as long.

Some states reach further than others. Texas and North Carolina count gifts and prizes as income. Several states count recurring capital gains. The common thread: if money arrives regularly and improves what a parent can spend, some statute somewhere counts it.

The regular exclusions are means-tested public assistance such as TANF and SSI, foster care payments, and child support received for other children. A new spouse’s income is generally not counted, though a few statutes let it matter indirectly.

Variable pay is where estimates most often go wrong. States smooth it rather than ignore it. Ohio includes the lesser of your three-year average of overtime, bonuses, and commissions or the most recent year’s total, so one unusually good year does not set the number alone. Texas annualizes income and averages it monthly. Many states allow income averaging when earnings swing seasonally.

Ohio adds a fairness valve worth knowing about: overtime worked primarily to support a new family can be disregarded. Rules like that are discretionary, which is one reason a calculator estimate and a court order can differ even with identical inputs.

For self-employed parents, income means gross receipts minus ordinary and necessary business expenses, not the top line and not taxable income. Courts then add back paper deductions that reduce taxes without reducing spendable cash. Michigan’s formula manual lists the classics: accelerated depreciation, home office expenses, personal auto costs run through the business. North Carolina disallows accelerated depreciation outright.

Self-employment tax gets its own treatment. Georgia deducts half of self-employment taxes on the way to adjusted gross income, mirroring the employer share a W-2 worker never sees.

Honesty note about our own tools: the Texas calculator on this site encodes only the OAG employee tax chart. It does not compute the separate self-employed (SECA) chart, so a self-employed Texas parent needs to enter net monthly resources directly rather than gross wages. Where a calculator of ours simplifies, its page says so.

Every state has some version of this rule: a parent who is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed can be treated as earning what they reasonably could earn. The formula then runs on that imputed figure instead of actual income.

Federal regulation sets guardrails. Under 45 CFR 302.56, a state that authorizes imputation must consider the parent’s specific circumstances, including assets, work history, education, health, criminal record, and the local job market. The same rule forbids treating incarceration as voluntary unemployment.

States implement the concept differently. North Carolina requires a finding of bad-faith income suppression before imputing, with a fallback floor of minimum wage at 35 hours a week when there is no work history. Florida presumes median full-time earnings when a parent provides no income information. These are fact-heavy judgment calls made by courts, which is why our calculators take the income you enter and never guess an imputed figure for you.