Filing Federal taxes with 3 different W-2's?

Question

I had 3 part time jobs last yr, so 3 different w-2's. I was expecting a decent refund check but everytime i include the job i made the most from i end up owing money. How is that possible? I thought if you claimed "1" or "0" that you get the most taxes taken out of your paycheck and that i would get that back. I dont really know anything about filing taxes but i thought you always got the federal tax witheld from you paycheck back.

Answer 1

You need to add up the income, and withheld from all three w2's together, yhen put that on the form.

Answer 2

You don't get all the federal tax withheld back unless you made under the limit to owe any taxes - then you'd get it all back. And depending on how much you make and how much is withheld, you don't necessarily get a refund at all. Sorry, but you thought wrong on this.

If you are single with no dependents, and claimed 1 on just one job, then you could owe some but probably not a lot. If you claimed zero, you'd usually come very close, or else get a refund. But what probably happened is that very little was taken out of one or two of the jobs because if you'd had income at that rate all year, you wouldn't have owed or wouldn't have owed much, then if one of the jobs was higher paying, you did make enough to owe. Each employer just knows about that job, so has no way to know that you're making money someplace else also -each one takes out taxes like that's your only job. This will especially get you if you have multiple part-time jobs that overlap, and work them pretty much all year.

Example to explain what I mean: say you worked two part time jobs all year, and made $8000 at each. For each job by itself, you wouldn't owe any tax so they'd take out little if any. But taken together, and that's how taxes work, you'd owe $759. This example assumes you're single, not a dependent, and don't have any dependents, but the same idea would hold for other situations.

When you do your taxes this year, add the W-2's together and figure the tax on the total. If you owe and can't pay it all, send in your return anyway - if you can pay part of it, send a check for what you can. The IRS will contact you about a payment plan. They'll charge interest of course, but at least you won't also get hit with penalties for not filing, which you will if you don't file on time in ADDITION to paying what you owe plus interest.

If you're still working multiple jobs, be sure you claim zero at each one. If you're already doing that, then have a little extra taken out each pay period for at least one of your jobs.

Good luck.

Answer 3

That's the way that it works out sometimes. Each employer assumes that what they pay you will average out at the end of the year and withholds accordingly. They have no way of knowing what you earned anywhere else so they can't figure that into the withholding.

It's YOUR responsibility to stay on top of it and make sure that you have enough tax withheld. Sorry, but "Thems is tha breaks."

Answer 4

You need to adjust your withholding on your w-4 form. This can be done at any time. FYI unless you have a lot of deductions usually a big refund means you have had too much money taken from you check, so you need to decide if you want your money in your check or if you want the IRS to hold it all year.

Answer 5

to do what you are outlining here will require you to have more knowledge that you indicate you have you will need to be able to get together the income you generated in each of the states you were self employed, you will need to be able to document the business expenses you had with that income, you will need to be able to separate all of this related to the amount of time you were working in each of the different states frankly from your comments, this is going to be a momentous task that without professional help seems very unlikely if you manage to get this all organized then you will need to be able to file your tax returns, first of all to IRS and then to each state you worked in, and this could mean two returns in one year to two different states

Answer 6

there are different withholding rates for different rates of pay and they are based on annual income for each pay level. its quite possible that you made just enought to bump you into a higher bracket without having enough money withheld.

Answer 7

because when you add the gross from each job together it puts you in a higher tax bracket. No you don't always get back what you paid in taxes.

Answer 8

You probably didn't earn enough from each of the different jobs to have any substantial amount of withholding.