Reminder: Maryland FAMLI paycheck deduction starts in January, a year before benefits

Maryland's paid family and medical leave program, FAMLI, starts taking money out of paychecks on January 1, 2027. The total contribution for 2027 is 0.9% of wages up to the Social Security wage base, and your employer can deduct up to half of it, 0.45%, from your pay. Benefits of up to 12 weeks of paid leave at up to $1,000 a week start in January 2028. Everyone in a job based in Maryland pays in, and there is no opt-out.

The year of paying without any benefits is on purpose: the state wants 12 months of contributions in the trust fund before the first claim arrives. It is also the end of a long wait. A 2025 law, HB 102, pushed contributions back 18 months from July 1, 2025 and moved benefits out of July 2026, after earlier delays in 2023 and 2024. We checked the 2026 session too: no bill passed that changes the rate or the dates, so January 2027 stands.

What comes out of your check

It's a flat percentage of gross pay, the same for hourly and salaried workers, part-time and seasonal staff included. The program's own example: earn $1,000 in a pay period and your share is $4.50. The percentage applies only up to the Social Security wage base. That base is $184,500 in 2026 and the 2027 figure isn't out yet; at the 2026 level, the most a worker could pay is $830.25 a year.

Small employers get a break, but their workers don't. A business with fewer than 15 employees owes no employer share at all. It can still deduct the full employee half, so someone at a 10-person shop pays exactly what someone at a hospital chain pays. At 15 or more employees, the business matches your 0.45% with its own money.

Here is a full biweekly paycheck for a single filer at $18 an hour, full time, in Montgomery County. Maryland's 2027 withholding tables aren't published, so the tax lines use 2026 rules; the FAMLI line is the real 2027 one.

The deduction scales with pay and nothing else. A salaried worker on $75,000 gives up about twice as much:

What the money buys in 2028

The benefit is based on your average weekly wage: your pay in your best quarter of the last four, divided by 13. On the part of it up to 65% of the state average weekly wage, FAMLI pays 90%. On anything above that, it pays 50%. The weekly check can't go over $1,000. The state average is $1,537 a week for 2026, which puts the 90% zone at about $999 a week; the figure used for 2028 claims will be set later and should be higher.

For the $18-an-hour worker, $720 a week sits well inside the 90% zone, so the benefit is $648 a week. Twelve weeks of leave would pay $7,776, about 46 times what that worker puts in during 2027. The $75,000 earner averages $1,442.31 a week; the formula lands above $1,000, so the cap applies, and 12 weeks pay $12,000. That's the trade the program makes: higher earners pay more and hit the ceiling first. The $1,000 cap is frozen through 2028 and only starts rising with inflation on January 1, 2029, another change HB 102 made.

Contributions are not refundable. If you never take leave, you don't get the money back, the same as Social Security.

How it shows on your pay stub

Expect a new deduction line in January. The label depends on your payroll provider, so look for something like "MD FAMLI" or "MD PFML" next to the other withholdings. Two things are worth checking on your first 2027 stub.

First, the amount. It should be no more than 0.45% of that check's gross pay. Under Labor and Employment Article § 8.3-601, the employee share is capped at half of the total rate, and an employer that decides to pay part of it for you has to tell you how much.

Second, the tax treatment. The deduction doesn't shrink your taxable pay. The IRS ruled in 2025 (Rev. Rul. 2025-4) that mandatory employee contributions to a state paid leave program stay in your wages for federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and show up in your W-2 wages. You can deduct them as a state tax only if you itemize. That's why, in the example above, every tax line is figured on the full $1,440.00 and FAMLI comes off last, which is also how our take-home pay calculator handles the paid leave deductions of other states.

If the line never appears, either your employer chose to cover your share, which the law allows, or payroll missed it. A missed deduction can't be clawed back from later checks. The one exception is a paycheck too small to cover it, mostly a tipped-worker problem, where the employer gets up to six pay periods to collect.

The 0.45% holds for all of 2027. The Department of Labor sets each following year's rate by November 1, starting in 2027, and by law the total can't go above 1.2% of wages. To see the effect on your own pay, run your salary through the calculator and subtract 0.45% of your gross.

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