Newly married couple shocked by high additional withholdings - $633/month! Is this right?

What you're experiencing is often called the "marriage penalty," which can happen when both spouses have similar incomes. The issue isn't that marriage itself is causing higher taxes, but rather that your combined income puts you in a higher tax bracket than you were individually. When you both were single, you each had your own standard deduction and your own progressive tax brackets. Now that you're married, you share one standard deduction (though it's larger than a single one) and your combined income is taxed together. The withholding calculator is likely correct. Without proper withholding adjustments, you might end up with a significant tax bill in April. That said, there are a few things you can check: Did you enter all information correctly in the calculator? Make sure you included all tax credits and deductions you expect to claim. Also verify you selected "Married filing jointly" as your filing status. You could also rerun the calculation but spread the additional withholding across both of your paychecks rather than taking it all from one person's check.

I went through something similar last year and the IRS withholding estimator can be super helpful, but sometimes overwhelming. I actually found taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) which really helped me understand my withholding situation better. It analyzed our tax scenario and explained in plain English why our withholdings changed after marriage. For us, it turned out we had made an error on our W-4s that was causing excessive withholding. The site helped identify that we were essentially double-counting some deductions and not properly accounting for our two-income household adjustments. I was able to correctly update our forms and get our withholdings more in line with our actual tax liability.

I was skeptical about taxr.ai at first, but after that discussion I decided to give it a try with our tax situation (newly married last summer, similar incomes to you). Wow, what an eye-opener! The tool showed us that we had incorrectly filled out our W-4s by not checking the "two jobs" box and not properly accounting for both of our incomes. It turns out we needed additional withholding, but not nearly as much as we initially thought. We were able to adjust our withholding to about $350 monthly instead of the $600+ the basic calculator had suggested. The explanations made it clear why we needed the additional withholding without being confusing. Definitely worth checking out if you're in a similar situation!

When I was trying to fix our withholding issues after marriage, I spent HOURS trying to get through to the IRS for help. Always busy signals or disconnections after waiting forever. Eventually used Claimyr (https://claimyr.com) and got through to an actual IRS agent who walked me through the W-4 calculations. They have a demo of how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c The IRS agent confirmed we were in the "marriage penalty" zone because our incomes were similar and both relatively high. But she also found we were calculating our additional withholding incorrectly. Instead of $600+ monthly, we actually needed closer to $400. The agent explained exactly how to fill out our W-4s properly to account for two similar incomes.

Well I'll be damned. I was the skeptic who thought that Claimyr service sounded like BS, but after struggling for two more days trying to reach the IRS myself about our marriage withholding issue, I broke down and tried it. Got connected to an IRS rep in about 35 minutes. The agent confirmed what others have said - with incomes of $125k and $68k, you're definitely in the zone where the "marriage penalty" can hit. But she also pointed out that the online calculator sometimes overestimates if you don't input all potential deductions. She helped me fill out our W-4s correctly and our additional withholding ended up being about $470/month - still significant, but better than the $633 originally calculated.

The marriage penalty hits hardest when both spouses earn similar, higher incomes. With $125k and $68k, you're not in the worst of it, but still affected. One thing to consider - are you both claiming the standard deduction? If you have mortgage interest, significant charitable contributions, or other potential itemized deductions, you might benefit from itemizing now that you're married. This could offset some of the marriage penalty effect. Also, make sure you're accounting for any pre-tax deductions like 401k contributions, HSA contributions, or healthcare premiums in your withholding calculations. These reduce your taxable income and might lower your additional withholding needs.

I got hit with this last year! We actually decided to adjust our withholdings to a slightly lower amount than recommended (did about $500/month instead of the $650 it suggested) and then made sure to save some extra money each month in case we owed at tax time. Ended up owing about $800 when we filed, which wasn't too bad. The marriage penalty is definitely real for dual-income couples with similar earnings. The withholding calculator is usually pretty accurate, but you can try running the numbers through tax software like FreeTaxUSA as a double-check. Just input your expected incomes for the year and see what it estimates for your taxes.