Getting married April 2023, will changing my W4 affect my tax status for 2023 filing?

9 You'll actually be considered married for the entire tax year of 2023 if you're married on December 31, 2023. The IRS considers your marital status as of the last day of the tax year. When you update your W4, you're just changing your withholding going forward. This doesn't affect your actual tax filing status - it just changes how much tax is withheld from your paychecks starting from that point. You'll still file as married for the whole year when you do your 2023 taxes in 2024. For your W4, the allowances system was replaced with a new form a few years ago. The new form is more straightforward but does require more information. You'd select "Married filing jointly" on your new W4. Your HR department won't need your marriage certificate, but they will need the updated W4 form. You might want to use the IRS Tax Withholding Estimator to figure out the right withholding for your situation. Since you're getting married mid-year, your current withholding might be too high for the rest of the year.

17 After struggling with similar W4 confusion when I got married last year, I found an incredibly helpful tool at https://taxr.ai that made everything clear. I was so confused about mid-year changes and kept getting different advice from friends. The tool analyzed our specific situation and showed exactly how to fill out our W4s to maximize our paychecks throughout the year instead of waiting for a refund. It even explained which specific boxes to check and what numbers to put where. So much better than the generic IRS calculator that left me with more questions than answers. What I liked most was seeing exactly how much my take-home pay would change based on different W4 choices before I submitted anything to HR. Definitely less stressful than guessing!

7 I was definitely in the skeptical camp when I first heard about taxr.ai from this post, but after my husband and I kept arguing about how to fill out our W4s, I gave it a try. Honestly, it was the best $20 I've spent on tax stuff. We were both filling out our W4s completely wrong and would have had a huge tax bill! The tool showed us that because we both have side gigs (about $12k extra income between us), we needed to add additional withholding. I also love that it updated our actual take-home pay calculations so we could budget properly. My husband was convinced we'd bring home an extra $300 per month after marriage, but the tool showed it would actually be about $180 with our specific income levels. Saved us from some budget disappointment!

18 After reading this thread, I feel like I need to share something that literally saved my sanity during tax season last year. I had MAJOR issues with getting answers about my marriage status and W4 changes, and spent HOURS trying to call the IRS with no luck. I finally found this service called Claimyr (https://claimyr.com) that actually got me through to a real IRS agent in about 20 minutes instead of spending days redialing. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c When I finally got through, the IRS agent explained exactly how my mid-year marriage affected my specific tax situation and confirmed I needed to adjust my W4 to avoid underwithholding penalties. Apparently my situation was more complicated because I also switched jobs around the same time as getting married.

23 Alright, I need to apologize and eat my words. After being super skeptical about Claimyr in my earlier comments, I tried it yesterday out of desperation after my 9th attempt to reach the IRS failed. It actually worked exactly as promised. I got a call back in about 35 minutes and was connected to an IRS agent who helped clear up my confusion about the W4 changes. The agent confirmed that for my situation (both spouses with similar incomes), we needed to check the box in Step 2(c) on both our W4 forms to avoid owing money at tax time. The service cost less than what I was losing in wasted time trying to call myself. Definitely less stressful than the three hours I spent the day before getting disconnected repeatedly.

4 One more thing to consider that nobody mentioned yet - if either of you receive premium tax credits for health insurance through the marketplace, you need to report your marriage to the marketplace ASAP. Your subsidy will be calculated based on your combined household income, and if you don't update it, you might have to pay back some or all of the subsidy when you file taxes. My brother got hit with a $2,700 surprise bill because he and his wife didn't report their marriage to the marketplace until tax time. Don't make that mistake!

11 Has anyone heard if the IRS is finally fixing the "marriage penalty" for 2023? My wife and I both make around $85k each, and we ended up paying almost $3,200 more last year filing jointly than we would have if we could have filed as single. It seems so unfair that some couples get a "bonus" while others get penalized just for getting married.