Guide · updated 2026-08-02
What Texas counts as net resources
Texas applies its child support percentages to net resources, a figure its Family Code defines with a closed list of deductions. It is not gross pay and it is not take-home pay, and the difference changes the guideline number.
The statute defines resources, then defines what comes out
Chapter 154 of the Texas Family Code works in two steps. First it defines resources broadly: wages and salary, commissions, overtime, tips, bonuses, interest, dividends, royalty income, self-employment income, net rental income, severance, retirement and pension benefits, unemployment and disability benefits, annuities, capital gains, gifts and prizes, spousal maintenance, and alimony. Then it lists what is deducted to reach net resources — and the list is closed. Social security taxes, federal income tax withholding calculated for a single person claiming one personal exemption and the standard deduction, state income tax, union dues, expenses for the child's health insurance or cash medical support, and expenses for the child's dental insurance. Nothing else comes out. Not a mortgage, not a car payment, not credit card debt, not a retirement contribution.
The federal tax line is a formula, not your withholding
The deduction for federal income tax is computed as though the payer were single and claiming one personal exemption and the standard deduction, whatever their actual filing status is. Someone filing jointly with three dependents has more take-home pay than that formula assumes, so their net resources under the statute are lower than their actual take-home. Someone in the reverse position sees the opposite. The Attorney General publishes a tax chart applying that formula, which is why the state's own calculator can start from gross pay while the statute is written in terms of net.
The percentages, and where they stop
Texas is a percentage-of-income state: the guideline takes a share of the obligor's net resources based on how many children are before the court, starting at twenty percent for one child and rising by five points per child to forty percent at five. The other parent's income does not enter the calculation. The percentages apply only up to a statutory cap on monthly net resources; above it, the guideline percentage applies to the capped amount and any further support must be justified separately by the proven needs of the child. That cap is not printed in the statute. The Family Code directs the Office of the Attorney General to adjust it for inflation every six years and to publish the adjusted figure in the Texas Register — so the operative number lives in a publication, not in the code, and a page quoting an old cap is quoting a figure that was superseded rather than one that was wrong when written.
Where the guideline stops being arithmetic
There is a separate, lower schedule for low-income obligors, and reductions where the obligor supports children in another household. Both are in the statute and both are in the calculator. What is not in either is discretion. Chapter 154 lists factors a court may consider in deciding that guideline support would be unjust or inappropriate in a particular case, and a court that departs from the guideline explains why on the record. The guideline figure is where the analysis starts.
Official sources for this guide
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