Isn't illlegal for someone to be claiming 9 kids in your W2 form?

Question

But in reality, doesn't really have any kids

Answer 1

The W-2 is the annual statement of wages and taxes withheld issued by an employer at the end of January each year.

The W-4 is the form that an employee fills out stating how many allowances the employee is claiming. The higher the number, the less tax withheld. You can claim whatever you want on this form. HOWEVER, if you do not have enough tax withheld during the year, you are subject to IRS penalties.....even if you pay your entire tax due when you file your taxes.

It's not uncommon for the W-4 to not match the actual number of dependents. There are other factors to consider.

For example: I want to break even at tax time. I don't want to have too much withheld and get a big refund but I also don't want to owe when I file. Even though I am single, with no dependents, setting my W-4 at single, no allowances would cause me to have way too much tax withheld because I know that I will have a big credit based on the tuition I'm paying. For me to break even, my W-4 is set to single, 5 allowances. It's not illegal because the proper amount of tax is being withheld for my circumstances.

There is a W-4 calculator on www.irs.gov that helps you calculate this. You enter your expected income, credits, deductions, etc and it tells you how many allowances to claim.

Each allowance simply excludes a portion of your income from the tax calculations when your paycheck is written. It does not mean that you are claiming that you have 9 kids. If the person claims 9 kids on the actual tax return, that is fraud.....but the person would have to come up with 9 social security numbers and I'm sure that return would be heavily scrutinized.

Answer 2

You don't claim anything on a Form W-2. Your employer gives you a W-2 after the end of the year that tells you what your gross wages were and how much tax (and a few other items) was withheld from your pay.

You file a form W-4 with your employer telling him how much tax to withhold from your pay. You do not claim "kids" on a Form W-4, you claim withholding allowances. You generally get one withholding allowance for each member of your family plus additional allowances for deductions and adjustments to your income that you expect to take on your tax return. Therefore it is entirely possible for a single person to be able to properly claim 9 withholding allowances on their Form W-4 depending upon their individual circumstances.

If a taxpayer claims too many allowances they are only postponing the day of reckoning with the IRS. The total tax will be due when they file and if they have a tax bill of more than $1,000 at filing time there will be additional penalties and interest for underpayment of taxes. On top of that, there is a strong likelihood that the IRS will issue a Lock Letter to the taxpayer's employer directing how taxes will be withheld, regardless of what the taxpayer claims on their W-4 or what they would otherwise legally be entitled to claim. Most Lock Letters direct tax to be withheld at Single and 0 or Single and 1 withholding allowance.

If you are the taxpayer's employer, it is NOT your job to question the allowances on your employees' Forms W-4. Your job is to withhold tax based upon the most recent Form W-4 on file with you OR in accordance with any IRS Lock Letters that you have received from the IRS. If the IRS has a question about the withholdings for a particular employee, they will ask you for a copy of the most recent Form W-4 that you have from the employee. The only way that YOU can get in trouble is by failing to provide that copy upon request from the IRS.

Answer 3

It is not illegal to reduce tax withholding via this method, but the person doing so had best have excellent evidence that such a number is necessary to bring the withholding into line with the actual amount of tax assessed when the final return is filed.

If the person doing so will need to send in a huge amount of money with the tax return when filed, the IRS may well question why this is done, and possibly direct the employer to withhold a more substantial amount in the future to make withholding match more evenly the taxes due.

Answer 4

If it is only on a W2, then no. It just decreases the amount of taxes taken out. However, by doing so, the person claiming this amount will probably have to pay in at the end of the year. If the person is claiming 9 dependents on their 1040, and there are not 9 dependents, it is fraud and the IRS will catch on rather quickly and that person would be in a lot of trouble. If you live in a state where you have to pay income tax, there may be other implications as well.

Answer 5

I understand that you love you dogs as much as some people love their children. But the expense of caring for an animal, in time and money, is not quite the same as caring for a child. You receive a tax deduction for children for two reasons that do not apply to pets: 1) The government wants to ensure that parents can afford to raise and care for their children. The expectation is that the tax savings will improve the child's quality of life. 2) Children grow up to become, hopefully, productive and tax paying members of society. This makes a tax break for children an investment in the future on the part of the government. Children are a lot more expensive than pets - with perhaps the exception of pets with serious illnesses. They need diapers, produce a load of laundry every couple of days, they outgrow their clothes every 6 months, require new toys for stimulation and constant supervision for the first 4 or 5 years of their lives.

Answer 6

No it is not illegal to claim 9 dependents on W2 form.

You will have less tax taken out of each paycheck and depending on how many dependents you can legally claim you may wind up having to pay taxes to the govt at the end of the year instead of getting a refund. Also if you are single then you will have to repay a huge amount of tax when filing and the IRS may start to send you adjusted tax forms to filled out quarterly and a payment sent to the IRS every three months.

Either way you will have to pay what is owed. maybe it's better to have a closer number of dependents clainmed on the W2 form that is closer to the real number of allowable kids that you can claim by providing social security numbers on the 1040 tax form

Answer 7

On your actual tax return, you claim legal dependents. On your W-4, you claim allowances, not dependents. Allowances are claimed for dependents, but also for other items like high itemized deductions that will reduce your taxes. An allowance reduces what's withheld through the year so you don't owe a lot when you file your return. It's legal, and common, for the number of allowances on your W-4 not to match dependents on your return.

That said, unless your friend has deductions to justify it, yes he's doing something illegal - just above where you sign the W-4 there's a line that says "under penalty of perjury...."

Your friend might not only have to pay a lot of tax when he files, but also penalties, if he's taking that many allowances and they aren't justified.

Answer 8

Actually you don't claim anything on your W-2. It is the Wage and Tax Certificate issued to you by your employer. Now, if you are asking about W-4, that's different. It is signed under penalty of perjury and false claims can be prosecuted under US Code 26, ,Section 7207

Answer 9

By claiming 9 on your W2 only minimizes the amount of weekly taxes taken out , to actually claim 9 on the tax return that you file is fraud....

Answer 10

Don't worry the "someone" will be paying a lot later. One thing I learned about the US Government is this: "You do not mess around with Uncle Sam's money or Uncle Sam will mess with you."