Close Menu
    Tax

    Help with updating W4 to married filing jointly, or keeping separate. Not tax savvy…

    Wife is self employed. She's going to stop working June 1 to raise our son for the rest of the year. She will have made about $38,000 gross at that point, but she will likely write off about 75% of that (last year she grossed $100k and wrote off $70k). I am in sales on track to make $160,000. Last year we filed married and jointly, but my w4 had been married filing separately, we owed a few thousand in taxes. I am looking to update my w4 to married filing jointly and am trying to make sure I am accounting correctly, am I lousy at this. Using the table for higher paying job/lower paying job, it shows I should claim an extra withholding of $318 a month. When I did the IRS calculator based on our joint income, it said it estimates I'm withholding more than necessary with an estimated refund of $11,000.

    What am I missing here? I appreciate any help 🙏. Does it even make sense to file jointly?

    Help with updating W4 to married filing jointly, or keeping separate. Not tax savvy…
    byu/OnlyBringinGoodVibes intax



    Posted by OnlyBringinGoodVibes

    2 Comments

    1. blakeh95 on

      If she’s not working, then there is no higher paying/lower paying job. There’s just one: yours.

      If you are the only one working, then at that point, you should be able to swap to MFJ, no box checked, no additional withholding. However, you would still need to verify that your withholding was correct for before she stops working (in other words, if you were $3,000 short before June 1, getting it “right” after June 1 won’t fix the earlier shortage, it would only make it correct for the rest of the year).

      I would wait until June 1 and then use the withholding calculator again. It may give you some wild values to put on the W-4. This is expected when making midyear changes. The W-4 calculator takes ALL the information you give it and combines it into ONE single change, unlike how we would do it as humans.

      So, for example, since you have one kid, that should be a $2,200 credit. Say you also need $50 additional withholding for the rest of the year over 16 paychecks. That would be $800 in additional withholding plus $2,200 in reduced withholding from the child. The calculator won’t list both, it will simply tell you to put $1,400 in the tax credit section ($2,200 credit – $800 additional withholding = $1,400 net credit to claim).

      Once you have suggested W-4 values in June, along with the income information up to that point, we can give you a sanity check on the estimates.

    Leave A Reply