hey what's going on guys Mike here of money and life TV along with my sidekick
chipper! alright guys I am excited to be here
with you guys today as we share the final part of this w-4 slash tax
withholdings series and so in today's video what you're gonna get out of it is
you're going to learn how the IRS withholdings calculator works as we're
gonna walk through an actual example on-screen it's not gonna take us very
long then once we get the results we're actually gonna look to figure out how to
heck t analyze that and what are the results mean third we're gonna be seeing
how to tell if we're actually on track with our just by looking at our pay stub
one of the ways we can tell we're on track with our withholdings last but not
least we're gonna look be looking at what to do if we don't want to actually
change our w-4 what else can we do if we're behind on our taxes to make up for
that so that's what we're gonna talk about today in today's video now this is
the third and final part of this the whole w-4 slash tax withholding series
as you guys know in part one we talked about how the w-4 how it goes from your
w-4 how it affects your paycheck and then how that in turn affects your tax
withholdings that's all in part one in part two we actually looked at a wage
projection worksheets that I actually created myself and that was in part two
and I'll link that up down below and I will definitely be checking it guys I
want you to check out the comments section and the description section of
this video when you get a chance which is found right below the video because
I'm gonna have some very important links so if you haven't seen part one part two
you can go back and watch them I think there's about an hour worth of
educational content within those within all these three parts combined that you
can truly learn how to master your tax withholdings and w-4 and things like
that so make sure you check that out okay so let's start to take a look at an
example now if you remember in part two we had a spreadsheet that we put
together and when I told you we're gonna walk you through the full process well
this we're gonna take the numbers we looked at in part two and then now apply
them to the IRS withholdings calculator so lets us go ahead and do that right
now
Rock World rock your world alright so I'm opening up Google and the first
thing we're gonna do is cuz you know we'd love to go to the IRS website
actually I even though I'm a CPA in real life I I hate going to the Harris
website but sometimes you know you guys got to do this stuff I'm not I don't
enjoy doing this stuff but it's important it's important so we know how
to best would be withholding our taxes and so that we're not greatly overpaid
or greatly underpaid on our taxes so we're coming to IRS gov and then it's
really easy to find this withholdings calculator guys but I'll have a link in
the description section below as well so you don't have to hunt for it so now all
we're gonna do is we're gonna go down to see where it says w-4 employees
withholding is allowance certificate click here and then it's gonna bring you
to this page with a bunch of links it the w-4 is actually right here and if
you clicked it this is what you would get this is where you could find the
2018 w-4 form we're not gonna look at that just yet we're gonna we want the
IRS withholding this calculator now just tell you guys no Vitt and I've told you
I mentioned it in part one but with Holy's calculator is probably the most
accurate way to project your taxes but you're gonna see why it was important in
part number two why we actually had a wage projection worksheet so we can
compare the results we would expect to get we do a little bit of tax planning
upfront which I said like I said I don't I'm a fan of it but it's worth your time
doing because then you you're taking a professional approach to planning your
taxes and then you can understand what's going on between that your projections
and the what's coming out on the IRS website it will help you better
determine what we need to do so now we're on the IRS withholdings calculator
web page we're gonna scroll down here and see where it says withholdings
calculator all we're gonna do is click that so here we go
and there that is let me move myself up here guys cuz i might be blocking the
way as we progress through this I don't want to do that I want my big head to
get in the way none of you guys like that so the first thing I asked
withholdings calculator is going to ask us is hey what's our filing status you
know do you file single married filing joint well as you guys know we're
looking at chippers example where it's chipper single right he's single and
ready to mingle
and we're just gonna click single right here and then can someone else claim him
as the defendant if you're over the age of 23 then usually the answer is no and
so for chipper the answer is no so nobody else can claim him as a defendant
so that's the first two questions very simple very straightforward so ease
click continue then this next screen it's where there's a lot of different
inputs and can get a little bit hairier let's just say well as we're going
through this but just a couple things I want to point out to you guys so first
of all it asks us to select the total number of jobs in which we are currently
employed in or will be employed it says in our military retirement pay our
taxable pensions as initial separate jobs so if you get pensions and things
like that that's obviously going to affect your taxable income so that's why
they want you to put more than one job here if that's the case but shiver just
has one job just one job now the great part about this guys I want you to know
you're like well what if I mess this up what is it is anything gets you know
there's my information get reported to the IRS when I'm doing this absolutely
not you don't worry about any of that guys what's what's cool is they you can
go through this a million times over it doesn't save the information but you can
then kind of see you can play with it tweak the numbers you can kind of see
how the results will change and you'll see that at the end of this but
whichever has one job now continuing it says then it says check the box if you
have a job this year but are no longer employed at that job well he's still at
the job still employed then it says check the box if you contributed to a
tax deferred retirement plan such as a 401k this year and yes chipper did so
we're gonna mark that in fact what I learned by doing this because I didn't
actually see that that line we just looked at when I was first going through
this and so when I got to the screen where we enter our wages here in a
second I realized there was no input for the 401k but so you won't see it unless
you check this box so make sure you check that and then it says check the
box if you contribute it to a cafeteria or their pre-tax plan such as a health
and health insurance this year or you know something else and if you guys see
how these are links guys if you click these it will give you additional
information on what kind of plans they're actually talking about so that's
just an FY some of this stuff I'm actually
including direct links to in the description section of the video so you
don't have to worry about it you can find all this information laid out for
you in the description section of this video okay can continuing on okay select
the number so he didn't receive any grants or anything like that so it's a
selected number of dependents you will claim on your tax return in and chipper
doesn't have any dependents so we're gonna put 0 here very simple this next
section now is talking about if a person 65 years of age or older
chipper is not 65 not yet he's not the youngest bird in the nest but he's not
the oldest bird in the nest if you don't I mean so we're just gonna skip on over
that so after we're past this part now we're looking at different kinds of tax
credits and this is where it's probably the most complicated area of the
withholdings calculator in my opinion because the credits the tax credits are
very can be very complicated and unless you know how the rules work but if you
have if you're getting the child in dependent Care Credit this is where you
would enter that how many kids you have it says if you plan to claim the credit
enter an estimate of work-related child and dependent care expenses so you would
have just drop in that estimated amount right there and as you can see there's
links that you can open up that talk about this kind of stuff which I'm
actually going to copy and paste most of this information directly in the
description section of this video so you don't even have to worry about opening
all these up ok that says no the calculator will also determine the non
child dependent credit for you based on your total number of dependents and this
number of qualifying children okay in earned income tax credit now this is
actually one of the most complicated tax credits but if you qualify for it or if
you expect to qualify for it you would enter the number of qualifying children
you have here very simple chipper doesn't have any qualifying children so
we're gonna skip that and then this one because there are so many tax credits
and let me prove it to you by clicking this link these are all the different
types of tax credits that are out there that may impact your actual tax
situation now remember guys the more credits you have the more it's going to
reduce your taxable income okay so the more credits you have the more it's
going to reduce your taxable income so therefore if your taxable income our tax
liability is going down you probably don't need to withhold as
much on your paycheck which is part of the reason why we're going through this
process but if this if these apply to you make sure to check it out you know
list a number of qualifying children you have there and now let's let's go ahead
and move on but it says down here if you claim any of these credits and follow
the recommendations at the end of this calculator the amount of tax withheld
from your paychecks will be reduced this is what what exactly I just said this
means that you will receive bigger paychecks throughout the year and a
smaller refund will be when you file your tax return the summary page at the
end of this calculator will show you your expected refund if you have had too
much withheld but it will not reflect any refundable portions of these credits
so guys they're just telling you straight front they're saying if you
have all these credits going into in your favor if you qualify for these and
guess what you don't need them withhold as much on your paycheck you get to keep
more the money you earned which is fantastic that's what we want all right
let's go ahead and continue and we're actually almost done with this
calculator now this is the income withholding screen as you can see this
is where we're gonna enter our taxable wages this is we're gonna enter bonuses
we're gonna enter our 401k amounts we're gonna enter the total amount of federal
income tax withheld your two dates in 2018 including amounts withheld from
bonuses or which you expect to have withheld from bonuses and so let's let's
just look at this right now no now you guys remember that in the example we
looked at in part two of the wage projection worksheet which I have right
here we looked at chippers wages and he expects at the end of this you know into
the year he expects to have about thirty-nine thousand dollars in gross
wages right you guys remember that and he has about five thousand or so going
into his 401k because he likes to withhold fifteen percent of his gross
income for retirement and he's got a small bonus down here so let's go ahead
and start entering this information now on the withholdings calculator and let's
see how this all plays out so on line one now I'm going back see if I can find
it here we go it says enter the gross wages salary tips you expect to receive
in 2018 use the amount of wages salaries and tips
for taxes or other items or subtracted so it's now notice it says gross wages
so well that means all of your wages before anything impacts it such as 401k
contributions etc so for chipper if we're looking back at our worksheet our
gross wages for the year that we project for him that he'll make in 2018 is gonna
be thirty-nine thousand dollars so we're gonna enter thirty-nine thousand dollars
right here because that's the amount of gross wages we would expect him to make
we're gonna drop that in right there and what about bonuses so the chipper expect
to receive any bonuses well if remember on our watch part two we're saying that
he expects to receive a two thousand dollar bonus before the end of the year
so we're gonna put in two thousand dollars on that line right over here
drop in two thousand retirement plan contributions we know we already have
that number figured out it's right here we five thousand eight hundred and fifty
so we're gonna come back to the withholdings calculator and drop in five
thousand eight hundred and fifty and we're just about done with this guy's it
says enter the total amount of federal income tax withheld to date in 2018 so
this is so when you're looking at your paycheck this is if you guys know that
each paycheck has a current column because for the current pay period
you're in but then to the right is usually on each pay stub it will say
year-to-date so you want to look at your year-to-date column to determine how
much tax has already been withheld for the whole year on on whatever pay stub
you're looking at when you're trying to do this okay so for chipper here today
we're going to drop in if we look at our spreadsheet currently he has nine
hundred dollars of tax withheld on his income federal federal tax withheld
year-to-date so he's just looking at the year-to-date call him on his pay stub
from his paycheck so we're gonna drop in nine hundred dollars there and in this
example we're not saying that any money at all was withheld from bonuses so
we're gonna come back to the calculator and we're just gonna drop in 900 bucks
right there it says enter the federal income tax withheld from your last
salary payment well if you guys remember part two he had a about 150 dollars
being withheld from every single paycheck and so that's pretty much all
we have to fill out for him in this section and then it's just about done so
now we know that chipper gets paid every two weeks because he gets paid bi-weekly
so he has 26 payroll periods in the year and I'm just gonna put what select the
date closest to when you first held this job so he's held this job from the
beginning of the year and he expects to have this job the entire year so he's
gonna be working all year long all year long okay now down here is where we
would enter if we had other types of income so if you have other types of
income from a business from real estate things like that this is where you would
enter this kind of information and it talks about the these other types of
earned income that you might have right here but this if you received
unemployment compensation you would put it right here for the year the gross
amount okay then then if you have other other non wage income so like if you
have dividends interest things like that you know that that would impact your tax
situation right so you would enter that information here and then adjustments so
this adjustments are things that typically will if you look at the front
page of a 1040 tax form if you study it the adjustment section is near the you
know near the bottom of that first page of the 1040 and that's its adjustments
to your income typically those adjustments will reduce your taxable
income depending on what it is so if you have deductible traditional IRA
contributions or if you have you're paying student loan interest like 20
like there's I think it's twenty five hundred dollars is still the current max
amount of student loan interest you can take any given year so you can that
would reduce your taxable income by twenty-five hundred dollars if that were
the case but you know like your HSA contributions IRA contributions things
like that you would enter the if you're doing that kind of stuff you would enter
that info Meishan right here okay so let's
continue because chipper we're just looking at shippers wages and so we're
just he doesn't have any of this other stuff going on currently he's gonna get
there but that's that's all he has still its KITT continue the next screen that's
gonna take us to is of course it's basically asking do we take the standard
deduction or do we itemize well chipper is pretty simple so he's not gonna be
itemizing so we're not gonna do anything on this screen if we plan to itemize
though we would enter our real estate taxes or state income taxes interest on
our home how many gifts we gave to charity things like that or in just
other itemized deductions we would list here but we don't have any of that in
this example so we're just gonna hit continue and it's gonna spit out our
result okay so here we go here's the screen that here's what the actual
results screen looks like on the IRS website it says based on this
information you previously entered your anticipated income tax for 2018 is two
thousand five hundred ninety one dollars if you do not change your current
withholding arrangement you will have three thousand three hundred dollars
withheld for 2018 result in an overpayment of seven hundred and nine
dollars when you file your tax return if you want your withholdings to be more
closely match your anticipated tax a gesture with holdings on a new W form
for us follows and then it gives us recommendations of I've had enter that
it would show us so it would tell us you know for for the job you entered which
you have a projected salary of thirty nine thousand dollars which matches our
spreadsheets which is what we expect we would have one allowance so basically on
our w-4 we would have one allowance right there and that's basically you
know we would fill this fill this information out put our name in put one
there and then and that's pretty much that would be pretty much yet we would
sign and date it and give it to our employer and then let's see here based
on so then it just goes on to talk more about the the refund that that they're
entitled to and and so on and so forth so looking back at this now let's look
at how this compares to our spreadsheet now according to our projections on our
spreadsheet which is now you're gonna truly see why we did this
is because you know we want to check our inputs versus the outputs here so we
have $39,000 showing up on our spreadsheet what we expected that
there's the gross wages right so we see that number there so that's right
now we're checking our inputs versus outputs we have $900 tax withheld years
to date because that's what we said it was and that matches our spreadsheet so
we've done like that we've done this we filled this information out beforehand
before we go to the IRS website so that we know our numbers are more accurate
and it makes it makes helps us make more sense of what the IRS websites showing
us and then you know total income earned of it in salary that's our two thousand
dollar bonus that shows up on a spreadsheet that we did and your total
plans and cafeteria so that's like for your 401 K or any other cafeteria plan
deductions you have B list right here tax withheld per paycheck was 150 so all
of these numbers I'm seeing are making sense however there's one that's not and
that is projected additional withholdings if you do nothing okay so
this is how many how much withholdings the IRS calculator is expecting us to
have so the IRS expects us to have $2,400 and withholdings plus the 900
right right here so 900 plus 2400 is $3,300 okay
that's how much this calculator assumes we're gonna get now the reason this is
is because it know so like whenever we go to fill this out so why is it why is
that number so different than our spreadsheet because on our spreadsheets
we we project that we're gonna have a total of 39 hundred dollars and
withholdings so that would mean chipper would get even a bigger refund than what
the IRS website is saying because we know that he gets about 150 bucks
withheld per paycheck and if we take 150 times 26 pay periods in the year he's
gonna have thirty-nine hundred dollars or we would expect him to have a total
of 39 hundred dollars in federal income tax withholdings by the end of the year
right but this calculator doesn't produce that so so what because
knows we're in May okay it it assumes there's only a certain amount of paper
is left so we know that the IRS website is coming up with a different number
here because it is based on when we enter this information into the w-4
calculator now we're at the beginning of May here so it thinks for about five
months in and we've indicated for this taxpayer that they get paid bi-weekly
and I'm trying to see if it says it on here I don't see it on here but because
they get paid bi-weekly the IRS calculator is is trying to determine how
many pay periods this person has left so how many paper so in order to figure out
how many periods it has left it takes this amount the twenty four hundred
dollars and it figures that every paycheck it's gonna about one hundred
fifty dollars we're gonna be withheld so we're gonna take twenty four hundred
dollars divided by one whoops divided by 150 and so it assumes that there's
twenty six I mean 16 pay periods left in the year and so that's why it's coming
up with that number at the end of the day chipper is gonna expect to receive
this a seven hundred nine dollar refund according to this calculator however we
would expect his refund to be even bigger because we know that based on our
projections we did hear by the end of the year he's gonna have this much
withheld versus only having the thirty three hundred withheld which was being
shown on the IRS website so his refund is really gonna be that
seven hundred and nine dollars at least what we can expect it's gonna be the
seven hundred nine dollars plus the six hundred dollars in addition to what we
expect him to withhold right $3,900 minus thirty four hundred ollars
is six hundred dollar difference so I would expect chippers whole refund for
the year to be one thousand three hundred nine dollars based on our
projections now that was a quick and dirty overview of these IRS withholdings
calculator there's a couple things I just want to point out to you guys real
quick let's go back to the start of this let's go back to where we found the
calculator there's a couple messages that are there's a couple things the IRS
mentions in regards to this that we want to you
might want to read before you start it says plan ahead tips were using this
program says the calculator will ask you to estimate values over 2018 income the
number of children you will claim for the child tax care credit and I have
videos on the child tax credit I don't have videos on the Earned Income Tax
Credit yet but I'm possibly in the future I definitely will be making one
of those so you can check out my other tax videos I'll link them I'll link up
my tax playlist in the video description below and then it says gather your most
recent paystubs have your most recent income tax return handy a copy of your
completed form 1040 will help you estimate your 2018 income and other
characteristics and speed up the process so you might want to basically they're
telling us guys have your pay stub your most current pay stub and have a copy of
your last filed tax return if you have it that's gonna help you go through this
process a little bit quicker and that will your previous tax return is going
to show you if you're getting some of those other credits so that's it's gonna
help it be a little bit easier for you if you have that information
now here's there a little disclaimer says keep in mind that the calculator
results will only be as accurate as the information you provide okay I'm on the
readout the results are only as accurate as the information we provided well
that's completely true right which is why now you guys can see why I take this
approach to using so if you haven't seen part to make sure to go watch it you can
see how this whole wage projection worksheet works and this is actually a
professional approach to planning your taxes and your tax withholdings many
accountants and CPAs I can tell you because I've been doing accounting now
for seven plus years have a similar approach to this when doing some basic
tax planning I mean usually it's a lot more complicated than that because if
you're working with business clients things like that but for a person who
just has wages they'll typically walk through approach like this in the real
world so this is a professional approach and I can tell you that based on my own
experience so I would really recommend you guys do this part first think
through the numbers first think through what the numbers should be before you go
enter them in the IRS withholdings calculator to get the most accurate
information and data possible and that will help you be more accurate on your
taxes and this they have a better grasp on our
financial situation so that's why I recommend people do this first okay guys
we just covered steps one in step two but now how do we determine if we're
actually on track with our withholdings well the easiest way to do that in my
opinion is to once you have done that process of going through the iris
withholdings calculator at that point in time write down based on that income you
had entered write down what it said your tax liability would be so that's what
you want that's what you're gonna be looking at if you remember I put this
down here in the spreadsheet but according to the IRS withholdings
calculator chippers estimated tax total tax that he was gonna go for the whole
year was two thousand five hundred ninety one dollars after you've done
this process remember that number that's probably the most important number the
IRS withholdings calculator spits out in my opinion is this number right here
based on your wages and everything it's telling you that this is how much tax it
thinks you're gonna owe and it's pretty darn accurate so so what we can do
throughout the year be looking at your pay stubs especially that's getting
closer and closer to the end of the year look at your pay stub look at that year
today column and make sure you're on track to be at that number or more so
that you're not gonna owe now if you notice that as you're looking at your
pay stub your your to date as the year progresses if your total taxes holdings
are not keeping up with that get us towards this number then we know we're
going to be underpaid we're gonna end up owing so so just be looking at your page
stub your date column and then throughout the year be comparing it
remember this number write it down after you've gone through the withholdings
calculator process I've closed the website but I had just taken a snippet
image of that from from that screen and so I could remember what the exact
numbers were and just just do that guys and then you'll know if you're on track
now if you're not on track obviously for some reasons your withholdings change
then you can fill out you have to two things you can do you can fill out your
w-4 or the other thing you can do besides fill out a new w-4 and withhold
additional taxes I mean you could it we could just like by filling w-4 we could
say to our pay person or company please withhold
another $50 of tax for paycheck or $100 additional tax for pip per check and
that will help you get caught up on your taxes but if you didn't want to do that
if you didn't want to go through this process of filling out a new for w-4
what can we do we can make a tax payment and that's actually what I did
for my wife and I this year is my wife took a new job recently and I notice her
withholdings are not where they should be and so what we did is we actually
just made instead of changing her w-4 right at this moment which we're gonna
need to do but to catch up we made a federal estimated tax payment
and that is something you can make it anytime and that is something you can do
besides change your w-4 so there's always that option you can go on the IRS
website and just make an estimate payment and because the IRS just want
you to pay in enough tax either through your check withhold your federal
withholdings or just you paying in through estimates so as long as you've
withheld enough or you no pay than an estimate a tax payment that covers the
amount that we thought it should be based on the withholding calculator then
you're gonna be fine so when you go to file your tax return you're either gonna
oh no money or you're gonna get refund and you're gonna be current and not
worry about your taxes whatsoever because I can tell you one of the worst
things that can happen is for you to have a large tax bill when you don't
expect it when you're not prepared for it and have to go into debt with the IRS
which is just one of the worst things that can happen so you do not want them
as a creditor they're the meanest worst creditor you could ever have so yeah you
just that's why this stuff is so important guys so let me know if did you
find that helpful did it did it make sense as we walk through this process
definitely please let me know in the comment section down below it would it
would mean so much to me if you found this helpful if you drop a like if you
comment I just love reading your guys comments and just hearing the questions
you have or just what you do to keep track of your withholdings and stay on
top of your taxes throughout the year I was just so chipper and I thank you so
much as always for hanging out with us make sure you definitely subscribe to
our channel especially if you want to learn more about finances more about
investing more about taxes and subjects like that we teach subjects that are
that are here to really help you improve your life in those areas on usually on a
weekly basis I try to produce one new video per week this is probably gonna be
the last tax video I have out for a while I will have a video coming out on
the new business tax law updates later this year so be looking for that and
maybe June or July ish around that time I will produce a video on that thank you
so much if you stuck with me through this whole series part 1 part 2 and part
3 of dominate your taxes I hope you really found this helpful and I am if
you guys liked it let me know if you want to see more videos like this just
just let me know and I can plant produce more in the future
alright guys love you have a great week and I will see you in the next video bye
guys
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