2020 W-4 Calculator & Form Changes

The new design simplifies the form and increases the transparency of the withholding system. The form uses the same information in a different way to make accurate withholding easier.

You’ll provide your completed Form W-4 to your employer.

If you have an older W-4 on file with your employer and you’re happy with your previous refund amount, you won’t need to complete a new one just because the form changed.

You should complete a new W-4 when you start a new job, get married, or have a child if you want more accurate withholding. It’s also a good idea to update your W-4 if someone in your household starts a new job.

The 2020 form was redesigned to more closely match your withholding with your tax liability, which reduces the likelihood of a refund.

The only two steps required for all employees are Step 1, where you enter personal information like your name and filing status, and Step 5, where you sign the form.

Completing Steps 2 – 4 (if applicable) means your withholding should more accurately reflect your tax liability.

You should increase your withholding if:

You are presented with an amount that you owe in taxes from the output of our W-4 calculator and your desired tax refund amount is $0.

You should decrease your withholding if:

You are presented with a tax refund amount from the output of our W-4 calculator and and your desired tax refund is $0. This may not be possible in some cases.

If you have self-employment income, you’ll generally owe self-employment tax along with income tax. With this type of income, you will not have withholding.

You can either:

Make adjustments to your W-4 with your employer to account for your self-employment income or pay quarterly estimated taxes to cover this income using Form 1040-ES, Estimated Tax for Individuals. Withholding for this type of income is made by claiming extra withholdings on line 4c.

The income from additional jobs may put you into a higher tax bracket, which has higher tax rates. To account for that, you should generally withhold more money from the combined pay compared to what you would withhold for each job alone.

Our W-4 calculator is forward looking, meaning your W-4 Form updates apply to your future paycheck withholding. To make sure you withhold the right amount for the rest of the tax year, you should provide the completed W-4(s) to your employer(s) as soon as possible after completion.

You can make adjustments (ex. You could reduce or remove "other income" sources from the calculation), but you should know these types of changes will reduce the accuracy of your estimated refund or amount of tax due. This is especially significant if you're entering information for multiple jobs.

Note: "Other income" is used in combination with wages from the highest paying job to calculate your level of withholding. Wage information from other jobs will not consider other income, deductions, etc.

We use the dependent information you enter to make assumptions about certain credits, such as the Earned Income Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Credit for Other Dependents. If you're not able to qualify for these credits, you should remove them from your calculations. Not removing them may mean that you withhold too little and will owe money at tax time.

Your results will only account for federal income tax withholding. Other paycheck deductions are not taken into account. You should consider other deductions your paycheck, such as Social Security tax, Medicare tax, state tax, local tax, insurance premiums, retirement contributions, etc., to determine if you're comfortable with your take-home pay amount.

If your results show you will have an amount owed (meaning your withholding is set too low), you may owe a penalty and/or interest for not paying enough taxes. To avoid further potential penalties and interest, you could make adjustments to your withholding as outlined in the question above "I want a refund at tax time."