married, filing jointly

[poodah]

This morning I stumbled upon a personal finance blog post concerning claiming exemptions on one's W-4. As has been my way recently over money and joint finances, this post put me into a panic and I spent about 30 minutes using a variety of online W-4 calculators that basically told me to claim zero exemptions. This would be disastrous as Jeff

Comments

My experience

[scentedwoods]

Before I had itemized deductions (my mortgage, giant property taxes and outrageous medical bills, um, yeah?) El Hubbo and I would claim zero exemptions and still owe taxes.

Now that I've got itemized deductions, we can claim 2 exemptions and still get a refund.

Re: My experience

[poodah]

It really makes no sense. Jeff claimed 2 in 2007 and got back $100. I claimed 3 and got back $2400. I'm sort of hoping we break even or owe a couple of hundred. If we owed several thousand, it would be a nightmare. I'm hoping my math, based on the above calculation, works.

Re: My experience

[divsca]

It makes perfect (non)sense if you factor in the marriage penalty due to graduated income tax tables. Let me tell you, getting married later in the year royally screwed us on taxes. It's retroactive for the whole year which neither of us had realized! Good that you're planning ahead and doing rough estimates.

Re: My experience

[poodah]

It is annoying the way the tax code still assumes one spouse makes far less than the other or nothing at all. Pretty much the only way income averaging for taxes will work to anyone's benefit. Soon, Jeff and I will be making the same amount and we'll really feel the penalty. And of course, married filing separately pay even higher rates.

I just hope my math is good and my calculations are accurate. I did that last year and probably would have been at zero for taxes this year--but I donated a crap load of stuff which I think made the difference.