What is a W-4 Tax Form?

Series Summary

Benjamin Franklin, one of the most authoritative of our Founding Fathers, has said that there is nothing certain in this world but “death and taxes.” Taxes were a big part of government operations as early as the Pharaohs of Egypt in 3000 BCE. In Feudal Europe, taxes came in many forms, including the scutage, tallage, tithe, and danegeld. The scutage was money that could be given to excuse a feudal lord from offering military troops to his lord, the standard price of being a vassal in the Middle Ages. Tallage was a monetary tax received from dependents. Tithes, usually of 10% gross income and enforced at varying levels of severity, were requested by the Church, built on the example of Abraham giving ten percent of his wealth to Melchizedek in the book of Genesis. The danegeld was money Medieval rulers demanded for landowners to have their territories protected from invading Danes and Vikings.

In this free video series, CPA Tom Noah tells you all about filling out a W-4 tax form for your employment withholding. You will learn what the W-4 is, why it is used, and how to fill it out. Tom leads you through personal allowances, the IRS Calculator website, and what you do for households with multiple earners or multiple jobs. It's all here!

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Tom and in this series I'm going to talk about form W-4. I'm going to use this as a example a married couple and the husband James Smith gets a job first. He completes the W-4 according to this personal worksheet. Next we are going to talk about James' wife Mary who gets her job second and completes this personal worksheet. Because they are a married couple with the 2 earners multiple job worksheet on page 2 we would go through that. We would show you how in their example they both completed their W-4s and what the implications were for them. In our example James is first to get a job so when James goes to the personal allowance worksheet when he completes it he has made a deduction for himself, his 2 children and the child tax credit that applies to them. He has not made any allowance for his wife because he knows that she plans to get a job and she would claim herself in the W-4. In this case since the children are already claimed Mary is not claiming anything for her spouse or her children so she comes up with just one personal allowance for herself."