dose anyone know if a wage garn is before or after taxes out of ur pay check??
2006-11-16 13:13:44 · 6 answers · asked by kate c 1 in Business & Finance ➔ Taxes ➔ United States
Your wages are being garnished because you owe some type of debt to the government or for child support and you fell behind far enough that the government is going after your source of income to get the money. Since there is no tax write-off for paying debt, the money they take from your wages is taken out does not lower your taxable income. This is commonly referred to as "after-tax"...unlike 401(k) contributions which are "pre-tax".
This means that the wages you earned which were taken away to pay the debt are considered part of your taxable wages. They will appear in box 1 of your W-2 just like the rest of your wages. They will need to be included on line 7 of your 1040 just like the rest of your other wages. Whether they cause a change in your tax liability depends on many other things on your tax return. Chances are they will cause your tax liability to increase. Does that mean you will definitely owe taxes when you do your 2006 tax return? Absolutely not! In fact, the garnishments will have no affect at all on your tax liability. Your employer is withholding taxes based on the W-4 that you submitted and they include all of your taxable income (including what you ultimately lose to garnishments) when figuring out how much to withhold. So, if your income hasn't changed much from last year and you haven't changed your W-4 since last year and everything on your tax return is basically the same as last year, you can expect roughly the same refund or amount due as last year. You simply ignore the fact that some of your after-tax income was applied to your existing debt.
Pretend there is no garnishment and your paycheck was just like any normal paycheck before the garnishments and you took part of that paycheck and used it to pay the debt. The same thing is happening now except you don't have to option to not pay it....it comes out involuntary.
2006-11-16 14:47:20 · answer #1 · answered by TaxMan 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I didn't find a source, but I would say after taxes. The reason is that whatever the garnishment is for would probably have been paid after tax. Why should you get a tax break for not paying what you owe?
2006-11-16 13:17:34 · answer #2 · answered by STEVEN F 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
After. The garnishment is for money you already owe, and has nothing to do with the taxes you owe on what you make this year.
2006-11-16 14:22:28 · answer #3 · answered by Judy 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's after. You still have to pay taxes on it.
They tried to garnish my wages for my ex husbands screw up because they couldn't find him. I got his parents to pay it off and then they could get it back out of him. They knew it wasn't my fault.
2006-11-16 13:15:36 · answer #4 · answered by unicornfarie1 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
that is such a stupid question so you just died, your life is in limbo, but honestly I have no clue what your talking about lol
2006-11-16 13:16:31 · answer #5 · answered by [quarantine] 3 · 0⤊ 5⤋
not too sure...
2006-11-16 13:15:37 · answer #6 · answered by the cool guy 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋