How to Fill Out Your Withholding Allowance Certificate

To fill out a withholding allowance certificate — the IRS Form W-4 that tells your employer how much federal income tax to take out of each paycheck — you only have to complete two of its five steps. Step 1 asks for your name, address, Social Security number, and filing status. Step 5 is your signature. Everything in between is optional and exists to fine-tune your withholding if you have more than one job, dependents, outside income, or deductions beyond the standard amount. The form was redesigned in 2020, and the word “allowance” was dropped from the title because the old numbered-allowance system is gone; the current version works in plain dollar amounts.¹

New employees must submit a W-4 on or before the first day of work.² If you filed one before 2020 and never updated it, your employer is still using that old version, and you don’t have to replace it just because the form changed.¹ Any change you want to make going forward, though, has to be on the current form.

Step 1: Your Information and Filing Status

Enter your full legal name exactly as it appears on your Social Security card. A mismatch can keep the Social Security Administration from crediting your earnings correctly. Add your address and Social Security number.³

Then check one filing-status box. This is the single most consequential choice on the form, because it sets the standard deduction and tax brackets your employer uses.

Single or Married Filing Separately. For anyone unmarried, divorced, or legally separated, and for married people who plan to file their own return.⁴
Married Filing Jointly (or Qualifying Surviving Spouse). For legally married couples filing together. A surviving spouse can use this status for up to two years after the year of a spouse’s death if they have a qualifying dependent child at home and haven’t remarried.⁴
Head of Household. For an unmarried person who pays more than half the cost of keeping up a home for a qualifying dependent. The standard deduction is larger ($24,150 for 2026, versus $16,100 for single filers) and the brackets are more favorable.⁵

To claim head of household, you must be unmarried on the last day of the tax year and the qualifying person must have lived with you for more than half the year.⁶

If you have one job, no dependents, and take the standard deduction, you can now jump straight to Step 5 and sign. The form will withhold based on the status you picked and nothing else.¹

Step 2: Multiple Jobs or a Working Spouse

Complete this step only if you hold more than one job at the same time, or if you’re married filing jointly and your spouse also works. Because tax brackets are progressive and you only get one standard deduction per return, a second paycheck that doesn’t know about the first will usually leave the household under-withheld.¹

You have three ways to fix that:

Option (a) — IRS Tax Withholding Estimator. The most accurate method. Enter your household’s income details into the online tool at irs.gov/W4App, and it returns a specific dollar figure to enter on line 4(c). Because the number lands on 4(c), your employer never sees that a second job triggered it.³
Option (b) — Multiple Jobs Worksheet. A lookup table on page 3 of the form. Find where your higher-paying and lower-paying wages intersect and enter that result on 4(c). Slightly less precise than the estimator for complex situations, but also invisible to your employer.³
Option (c) — the checkbox. If your household has exactly two jobs with roughly similar pay, check the box in Step 2(c) on both W-4s. The trade-off is that your employer can see the household has multiple jobs.

If you also have self-employment income alongside a W-2 job, the IRS specifically recommends the online estimator because it can account for self-employment tax and any estimated payments you already make.³

Step 3: Dependents

Step 3 reduces your withholding to reflect the child tax credit and the credit for other dependents. For 2026:

$2,200 for each qualifying child under age 17 at the end of the tax year³
$500 for each other dependent, such as a child 17 or older or a qualifying relative⁷

Multiply out each category, add them together, and write the total on line 3. Your employer subtracts that amount from your projected annual tax before spreading the remainder across your paychecks, so your take-home rises right away.

One caution: these credits phase out when adjusted gross income exceeds $200,000, or $400,000 for married couples filing jointly.⁸ If your income is near or above those numbers, claiming the full amount here can leave you under-withheld. The IRS Withholding Estimator handles the phase-out for you.

Step 4: Other Adjustments

Step 4 has three separate lines and you can use any or none of them.

Line 4(a): Other Income

Enter the annual total of income you expect that won’t have tax withheld — interest, dividends, retirement distributions, rental income, and the like. Your employer will withhold a little more from each paycheck to cover it, sparing you separate quarterly estimated payments.

Line 4(b): Deductions Above the Standard Amount

Most people take the standard deduction: $16,100 for single filers, $32,200 for married filing jointly, and $24,150 for head of household in 2026.⁵ If you plan to itemize and your itemized total will exceed your standard deduction, enter the difference on 4(b). The Deductions Worksheet on page 3 walks through the math. The result: less is withheld each pay period, rather than a bigger refund next spring.

Line 4(c): Extra Withholding

A flat dollar amount you want removed from every paycheck on top of what the formula already calculates. Use it to cover freelance income, to make up for a spouse’s under-withholding, or simply to build in a cushion. If you used the estimator or the Multiple Jobs Worksheet in Step 2, the number they produced goes here.

Step 5: Sign and Date

Your signature is a declaration under penalty of perjury that the form is accurate. Without it, the W-4 is invalid, and your employer must withhold at the highest rate — single with no adjustments. Most employers now accept electronic signatures through their payroll portals, and those carry the same legal weight as ink signatures provided the system includes the perjury statement.⁹

Claiming Exempt From Withholding

If you owed zero federal income tax last year and expect to owe zero this year, you can claim exemption from withholding. Both conditions have to be true.³ Write “Exempt” in the space below line 4(c), complete Steps 1 and 5, and leave the rest blank.

The exemption expires every year on February 15. If you don’t submit a new W-4 claiming it by that date, your employer will start withholding at the single-with-no-adjustments rate.¹⁰ Even if you qualified last year and still qualify, you still have to resubmit.

When to File a New W-4

You can submit a new W-4 at any time; there’s no cap on updates. But some life changes require a new form within 10 days if the change reduces the withholding you were entitled to claim:¹¹

Divorce or separation that changes your filing status
Losing a dependent, such as a child who ages out of qualifying-child status or moves out
A spouse who stops working, making an earlier multiple-jobs adjustment unnecessary

Other changes don’t legally require an update but should trigger one if you want your withholding to stay accurate: getting married, having a baby, buying a home with a deductible mortgage, or picking up a second job.¹¹ Running the IRS Withholding Estimator once a year, or after a big financial event, is a reasonable habit.

After You Turn It In

Give the completed form to payroll or HR. Most employers accept it through a secure online portal; paper still works. For a new hire, withholding starts with the first paycheck.¹²

For an existing employee submitting a revised W-4, the employer has to put the change into effect no later than the start of the first payroll period ending on or after the 30th day after they received it. They can apply it sooner if they want.¹² Most payroll systems process the change within one or two pay cycles.

Check your next paystub. Compare the federal income tax line to prior ones. If nothing moved, or it moved the wrong direction, contact payroll — a data-entry error is much easier to fix in February than to untangle in April. Keep a copy of every W-4 you submit, whether that’s a screenshot of the electronic confirmation or a photocopy of the paper form.

What the W-4 Doesn’t Cover

The W-4 handles federal income tax only. If you live or work in a state with its own income tax, your employer will hand you a separate state withholding form. A few states accept the federal W-4; most have their own version. States without an income tax, such as Texas, Florida, and Nevada, don’t require any state form. Ask payroll which state forms apply, especially if you work remotely in a different state from your employer’s office.

Nonresident aliens working in the United States use the same Form W-4 but follow the supplemental instructions in IRS Notice 1392, which change how several lines are completed.¹³ If a tax treaty between the United States and your home country exempts some or all of your pay, you’ll file Form 8233 instead of, or in addition to, the W-4.

1
Internal Revenue Service. FAQs on the 2020 Form W-4
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 3402 – Income Tax Collected at Source
3
Internal Revenue Service. Form W-4 (2026)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Filing Status
5
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026
6
Internal Revenue Service. Theres More to Determining Filing Status Than Being Married or Single
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 24 – Child Tax Credit
8
Internal Revenue Service. Child Tax Credit
9
eCFR. 26 CFR 31.3402(f)(5)-1 – Form and Contents of Withholding Allowance Certificates
10
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 15 (2026), Circular E, Employers Tax Guide
11
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 505 (2025), Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax
12
eCFR. 26 CFR 31.3402(f)(3)-1 – When Withholding Allowance Certificate Takes Effect
13
Internal Revenue Service. Withholding Certificate and Exemption for Nonresident Alien Employees