Tax Question.

Greg Bockelman

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Greg Bockelman
I am getting a tax refund that is bigger than I like. How much is each allowance worth? IOW, if I increase my allowances by one, how much would it reduce my refund?
 
Wow, Joe. Thanks for the quick response, but I am getting a headache looking at that and I still can't figure it out.
 
Wow, Joe. Thanks for the quick response, but I am getting a headache looking at that and I still can't figure it out.
Look at your W2 divide gross income by 52 to get weekly income. Go to the Married table down to the line that has that amount then look at the columns with the number of exemptions you currently claim then one more. Take the difference multiply it by 52 and that's how much your withholding will change.

It's the IRS, remember the Tax Code is commonly knows as the "Accountants and Lawyers Full Employment Act."

Joe
 
I am getting a tax refund that is bigger than I like. How much is each allowance worth? IOW, if I increase my allowances by one, how much would it reduce my refund?


Each allowance is worth about 3650 X your tax bracket If you are not in excess of a certain income level. So, if you are in the 25% bracket, it would be worth about $900 per year.
 
Not that I can get a better return anywhere else lately. :mad: :D

Ok, I used to work with a guy who had two theories.

One - you didn't have to submit your tax form to the IRS if you didn't owe them any money - you just had to prepare the form by April 15.

Two - money refunded (after an extended period of time) would include interest, and that interest rate was better than what you could get at the bank at the time.

Last I talked to him he had several years worth of returns sealed up in envelopes in a drawer. :dunno:
 
Ok, I used to work with a guy who had two theories.

One - you didn't have to submit your tax form to the IRS if you didn't owe them any money - you just had to prepare the form by April 15.

Two - money refunded (after an extended period of time) would include interest, and that interest rate was better than what you could get at the bank at the time.

Last I talked to him he had several years worth of returns sealed up in envelopes in a drawer. :dunno:

That guy's theories are, well, interesting. In the same way the theory that snakes come from horse hairs was interesting. Flat out wrong, but interesting.
 
I tend to get a bigger refund than I like, but these days I genuinely don't care. My money doesn't make much money for me, so an enforced savings plan is not the worst idea. If times were better or I could see a good return on the money I might change things. Right now I don't see the need.
 
This is the kind of question I ask my accountant so I'm sure I don't screw it up because as Greg discovered trying to read the table, there are just too many variables involved for a nonprofessional to get it right unless your tax situation is really simple (which mine isn't).
 
I flew with a guy for a brief period (but any amount of time was too long with that idiot) who espoused a number of theories on various subjects related to the governments's ability to tax, regulate and whatever. He's now (or was) living in Costa Rica, after learning what was going to happen if he stayed in the US. He also asked me about the viability of his grand plan. He wanted to buy $5mil life insurance on his 86 y/o mom, since her life expectancy was much less than his, and wanted to know if it could be done. When I told him sure, the only problem would be that the first year's premium would be $5 mil and then the policy would be paid up, he wasn't quite sure what all that meant.

Ok, I used to work with a guy who had two theories.

One - you didn't have to submit your tax form to the IRS if you didn't owe them any money - you just had to prepare the form by April 15.

Two - money refunded (after an extended period of time) would include interest, and that interest rate was better than what you could get at the bank at the time.

Last I talked to him he had several years worth of returns sealed up in envelopes in a drawer. :dunno:
 
For the first time in a long time I am getting a big refund. Usually I have to pay a couple of extra thousand come tax time. But thanks to the lousy economy one part of my compensation package has been way down, my bonus. I work for a company that actually expects to only pay when the business is good, not like a Wall St. financial firm. So my pay has been down for the past couple of years and this year it was down enough that I had too much withholding.

Greg, my advise is look at you withholding and at your tax liability. If you get paid ever 2 weeks divide your tax liability by 26. This will tell you about what you should have withheld each pay check to achieve a zero tax payment/refund at filling time. Then adjust your withholding up or down based on that. I actually have extra money taken out each pay day on top of claiming zero exemptions. That has worked until this year.
 
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If you look closely, the Feds can penalize you for withholding too much as well as for withholding too little, probably because they don't like giving back money they thought they had available to spend. Another reason for professional tax help if you're in a situation where this becomes significant.
 
If you look closely, the Feds can penalize you for withholding too much as well as for withholding too little, probably because they don't like giving back money they thought they had available to spend. Another reason for professional tax help if you're in a situation where this becomes significant.

For businesses purposes or those that file a quarterly (self employed) that is true, but I am not sure that they can hit you for paying too much in for personal. My income is straightforward, a W-2, a 1099-INT, and a stock sale or two - but I also have no idea what my bonus is going to be. It has varied by 1200% over the past 13 years. I also have no idea what my deductions are going to be for the year, because I have a variable rate loan, I don't know how many charity flights I will be doing, I don't know the other writeoffs I may or may not have. I'm supposed to adjust my W-4 17 times during the year? Yeah, that's not going to happen.
 
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I am getting a tax refund that is bigger than I like.

That has to be the first time I have heard ANYONE say that.

Yes I do understand what you mean. Why give the goverment a free loan.
 
That has to be the first time I have heard ANYONE say that.

Yes I do understand what you mean. Why give the goverment a free loan.

I always try to end up owing a few thousand. Not only can I usually do better than the government rate they give for overpayment, if I owe at the end of the year (within allowable limits) I got an interest free loan. The downside is that if you aren't careful you can end up with penalties. As long as you paid in as much in the current year as you owed (total) the previous year you wouldn't be assessed with a penalty and that worked pretty well when the economy (and my income) was climbing.

The thing that's killing me is the stupid AMT. I've been hit with that pretty hard every year for the last 10 years, mostly because I pay a lot of state income tax (go figure, I have to pay more federal tax because I live in a high income tax state). For the most part this just wipes out much of my itemized deducting.
 
As long as you paid in as much in the current year as you owed (total) the previous year you wouldn't be assessed with a penalty
That's how I do it. I calculate how much is going to be withheld from my paycheck during the year then pay estimated tax to cover the difference up to what I paid the year before. This works fairly well for me because my pay (and withholding) from work is predictable but my investment income is not so much so.
 
Ok, I used to work with a guy who had two theories.

One - you didn't have to submit your tax form to the IRS if you didn't owe them any money - you just had to prepare the form by April 15.

Two - money refunded (after an extended period of time) would include interest, and that interest rate was better than what you could get at the bank at the time.

Last I talked to him he had several years worth of returns sealed up in envelopes in a drawer. :dunno:


Wrong on both counts.

Snakes don't come from horse hair? :lol:
 
Greg, my advise is look at you withholding and at your tax liability. If you get paid ever 2 weeks divide your tax liability by 26. This will tell you about what you should have withheld each pay check to achieve a zero tax payment/refund at filling time. Then adjust your withholding up or down based on that. I actually have extra money taken out each pay day on top of claiming zero exemptions. That has worked until this year.

Not to sound flip, Scott, but DUH!!! The adjusting withholding is what I am trying to figure out. How much is an allowance worth?
 
Each allowance is worth about 3650 X your tax bracket If you are not in excess of a certain income level. So, if you are in the 25% bracket, it would be worth about $900 per year.

That is the closest thing to a useable answer I have gotten. :D That is what I am looking for. Thanks.
 
snip...
The thing that's killing me is the stupid AMT. I've been hit with that pretty hard every year for the last 10 years, mostly because I pay a lot of state income tax (go figure, I have to pay more federal tax because I live in a high income tax state). For the most part this just wipes out much of my itemized deducting.

I've been working on my taxes all week. Thanks to your post, that jogged my memory to look at the state taxes and I will itemize this year since I ended up paying almost the whole thing for 2008 in 2009 and also most of 2009 in 2009. In prior years, I just used the standard deduction. This year, I ended up paying more than 8 times what I have normally paid for state taxes in prior years. So, guess what, my first year with the AMT! It is really irritating to pay more federal taxes because I payed more state taxes! I studied a lot of the variables tonight and it looks like I will be paying 28% extra on about one third of the state taxes. (should have paid that one third in 2008 :mad3:)

But, even so, I will be paying less than if I had used the standard deduction.

Forecast out to next year, I have already paid enough state taxes to hit the AMT. This is an incentive to delay paying the balance of state taxes until 2011, thereby saving 28% of that, even if it ends up with up to 6% in interest. I'm not sure because it could just keep the problem pushed out each year until the income drops significantly. Could be a Bad deal for states right now.
 
Not to sound flip, Scott, but DUH!!! The adjusting withholding is what I am trying to figure out. How much is an allowance worth?
Not to sound flip back at ya. But was there something on the W4 that you did not understand then? The worksheet is very clear and quite basic for a tax form. There is not a straight answer to your question as your withholdings are based on a formula that takes into account variables such as your salary that it is being applied to. When you were given that answer your response was that you could not understand it and it "gave you a headache", so I was trying to help you by giving you some basic information and then stepping you through the process without trying to make it look like you were clueless. Sorry if I did end up making you feel that way. ;):)

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf?portlet=3 is the worksheet. Follow it first. Check it against what your exemptions are now.

If you are claiming exemptions now you will reduce them according to the worksheet. Watch what your first paycheck has for their withholding, then review what your calculations have told and make any adjustments if needed. Using an iterative approach is the best way to figure it out. There really is no checklist or look up table that will give your a direct answer to your specific need. You would have to run those formulas and such that you balked at earlier.
 
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Does this help?

Actually, not too much. I had already found that site.

I over paid by X amount. Each allowance is worth Y. I need to find out what the value of Y is so that I know how many Y's it takes to bring X to zero. Should be a simple matter to find out the value of Y, but apparently not. :(
 
Actually, not too much. I had already found that site.

I over paid by X amount. Each allowance is worth Y. I need to find out what the value of Y is so that I know how many Y's it takes to bring X to zero. Should be a simple matter to find out the value of Y, but apparently not. :(
To know that you have to figure which bracket contains your highest block of taxable income....e.g, your marginal tax rate.

...OR, you can withold nothing and simply do quarterly payments based on your turboTax calculation.
 
To know that you have to figure which bracket contains your highest block of taxable income....e.g, your marginal tax rate.

...OR, you can withold nothing and simply do quarterly payments based on your turboTax calculation.

So is the formula used in Post 8 an accurate one? As for quarterlies, thanks but no thanks.
 
I am getting a tax refund that is bigger than I like. How much is each allowance worth? IOW, if I increase my allowances by one, how much would it reduce my refund?

Personally, I use a spreadsheet to compute my taxes like the one at taxvisor.com. I then compare how much tax it says I owe, compare it to the tax currently being withheld, and ask my employer to increase my withholdings by the difference. (Why bother with "allowances" when you can just specify a dollar figure? I dunno if all employers let you do this.)

I've found that when I do this my taxes are usually within a couple of hundred dollars either way at the end of the year.

Chris
 
So is the formula used in Post 8 an accurate one? As for quarterlies, thanks but no thanks.


Yes, and it is fairly close if all remains in on marginal bracket... You must know where you stand in the marginal tax rate. If a portion is in a different bracket, then you need to account for that. But, you can only adjust in increments of one allowance anyway... If you want more details, then just check Pub 15
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15.pdf

Take a look at page 42, if you were single, received $1245 per week and if you now had 1 allowance and then moved to 2, the witholding would be reduced from $203 to $185, or a $18 per week, x52 weeks = $936. But, if you were now at 2 allowances and moved to 3, the witholding would be reduced by $17 per week, or $884. Overall, they average the marginal bracket x the personal exemption, i.e. in this case, 25%*3650= $912.50.

Using this formula, I find it to be "close enough".
 
Here is one resource. Scroll down to Standard Deductions.

http://www.smbiz.com/sbrl001.html#pis10

Data for 2010. Who knows what the [delete derogatory adjective] folks in Washington will do next year.

It has nothing to do with the Standard Deduction. It has to do with the
Personal Exemption--2010

[SIZE=-1] Amount--$3,650[/SIZE]


[SIZE=-1]and your marginal tax rate.
[/SIZE]
 
It has nothing to do with the Standard Deduction. It has to do with the
Personal Exemption--2010

[SIZE=-1] Amount--$3,650[/SIZE]


[SIZE=-1]and your marginal tax rate.
[/SIZE]

Feeling particularly disagreeable this morning? The Standard deduction section has the information on addition dependent allowance...
 
Greg, FWIW I have found that the government seems to be much more interested in explaining how to increase the amount withheld from your paycheck rather than how to decrease it.
 
Feeling particularly disagreeable this morning? The Standard deduction section has the information on addition dependent allowance...

OK, so how would you figure the answer to the OP question using an example with data from the Standard Deduction section?
 
Greg, FWIW I have found that the government seems to be much more interested in explaining how to increase the amount withheld from your paycheck rather than how to decrease it.

He He. No kidding.

BTW, thanks folks for the help. I figured out how to get it done thanks to my CPA Sister-in-Law.
 
Typical pilot. Asks all the airport doofi first, then asks somebody who might actually know the answer. *sigh*

He He. No kidding.

BTW, thanks folks for the help. I figured out how to get it done thanks to my CPA Sister-in-Law.
 
OK, so how would you figure the answer to the OP question using an example with data from the Standard Deduction section?

Simple. Look at the deduction for the allowance and then go to the tax tables for the taxes at various expected adjusted gross incomes. No need to complicate things.
 
Simple. Look at the deduction for the allowance

Which is $3650

and then go to the tax tables for the taxes at various expected adjusted gross incomes.

Which is the marginal tax rate


No need to complicate things.

Exactly - Which is what I stated. It has nothing to do with the Standard Deduction...

And, yes, I have been a bit disagreeable this week due to having to work on my taxes! Sorry, Nothing personal... Next week will be better.
 
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