Not enough income tax withheld

[Glynda4610]

I have an employee that is upset because not enough income tax was withheld on his earnings last year. I had another employee with me for a short time that had the same issue. Both had filed their w4 as “Married, filing jointly “, but only $200 was taken out for the entire year. The employees wife, who works elsewhere, made about the same income for the year and had about $2000 taken out of her checks. Looking at some of my employees withholding, some look normal, others look extremely low. Has anyone else had this issue?

[Stacelyn24]

I wish that I could help, but I'm curious to see if anyone else has had this issue as well...since I too will be using payroll soon at our second location, and would like to avoid this issue if I can.

[Donnie-M]

@Glynda4610 This is going to be a common occurrence this year for some people.  It is hard to compare employees unless they all have the same filing status.  Married filing jointly will generally be a much lower rate than single, etc.  You also would have to make sure that the other business is following the same guidelines with the same w-4 status etc.  Not saying your employee isn't telling the truth, but you do not have a way to verify all of this information.

People who got the monthly payment for children, it was actually and ADVANCE tax credit for this year.  Also, if the employee had any unemployment that wasn't taxed, they will get hit with that too.

What I recommend is that the employee go to the irs website link below and go through the questions with their most recent pay stub and see where they need to be.

https://apps.irs.gov/app/tax-withholding-estimator