How do I change the tax withholdings for my W-2 job?

If you have owed money to the IRS when your taxes have been filed, and you have a W-2 job (aka, you work as an employee of someone else), you may want to adjust how much of your wages are withheld for taxes, but how do you do this?

The way you control how much is withheld for taxes is with a Form W-4, which just tells the payroll department at your job how much or how little to withhold. You may have filled one out when you first started your job and then never really thought about it again, but if you want to adjust your withholdings, you will simply need to fill out a new Form W-4 and submit it to your payroll/HR department.

Here are a couple general principals when it comes to filling out the W-4:

Having “Married filing jointly” checked will result in less being withheld than if “Single” is checked.
The more children/dependents you claim in Step 3, the less will be withheld for taxes.

If you tend to owe come tax time, here are some things you may want to adjust:

Checking “Single” rather than “Married filing jointly” as your filing status
Reducing the amount that you include in Step 3 (which will increase your withholdings)
If you already have “Single” checked and 0 in Step 3, and you still owe taxes every year, checking the box in Step 2(c) will further increase your withholdings

Keep in mind that what you put on the W-4 has no bearing on how you are able to file your taxes, it is simply a way to communicate to the payroll department how much you would like to have withheld for taxes. (So even if you are planning on filing as Married Filing Jointly, you can still select “Single” on the W-4 as a way to increase your withholdings.)

The IRS also has a Tax Withholding Estimator that you can use to help you determine the best way to fill out your Form W-4. You can find that HERE.