In the past myPay made it really easy to change the federal withholding. It was something like Married and 2 dependents. Now you have to enter a dollar amount. What dollar amount would I enter to have the LEAST amount of taxes taken out?
MyPay deductions for federal witholding
byu/bcrysb inMilitaryFinance
Posted by bcrysb
3 Comments
The least amount of federal income tax you can have taken out is 0. Is that really what you want? 0 federal income tax withheld? That’s very different from the basic setting of married 2 allowances on the old form.
Use the IRS Withholding Estimator and match the blocks from the W-2 it generates to the boxes on MyPay.
In general, just follow the instructions. Select Married or Single. Check two jobs or spouse works, if applicable. Enter $2200 in credits for each child under 17 that you’ll claim. Etc. There are more detailed instructions at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf
I’m curious why you’re trying to zero out your withholdings? Are you junior enlisted whose salary is near the standard deduction? If so, your default withholdings should already be quite low.
If you zero out withholdings but will owe taxes, you can actually rack up underpayment penalties if you don’t withhold. (You could choose to not withhold from your paycheck and instead make estimated payments, but that’s extra administrative overhead for little to no benefit.) Meaning, if you have zero withheld for all of 2026, then April 2027, you’ll owe taxes for the entire year *plus* penalties for not paying taxes evenly throughout the year.