(I am not a lawyer, I am not an accountant, this is not legal advice, this is not tax advice)

Form W-4 is what you give your employer to set how your tax withholding works. The numbers from W-4 plug into the withholding formula, along with your taxable pay amount each paycheck.

For several years, up until 2018, the withholding formula kept letting lots of people "take home" more and more of their paycheck by withholding less and less. Taxes didn't change, though, so some of these people found themselves owing the government some money each year instead of getting some money refunded.

Starting in 2018, the tax code and withholding formulas changed significantly for most individual tax payers. The 1040 form was simplified. People got to take home a lot more of their paycheck, often times more than they should have. There was no good way to "fix" this if you were having way too little taxes withheld except to just update your W-4 with an extra amount to withhold.

Starting last year, Form W-4 finally changed. It's a little bit confusing, I won't discuss how it works now, check the IRS website for info.

The key point here, is if you gave your employer the "old" Form W-4, and have not given them an updated W-4 on the "new" form, then your employer has to apply some weird rules to interpret your "old" W-4 under the new formula. This interpretation can cause issues depending on your situation. To "fix" your situation, you have to provide an updated W-4 on the current form.

Most of the issues I've seen around withholding relate to W-4 Step 2(c) (a checkbox), and Step 3.

i don't have the link sorry, but am hoping to calm you and others down. no matter what you or your consent puts on your w-4 for dependents when you file your taxes you'll be taxed accordingly based upon your ACTUAL # dependents.

if your w-4 was filled out with say 3 dependents they government and your company would assume you needed more of your paycheck to survive so they'd take less money out each pay cycle. if in fact you're just a single person then when it comes time to do your taxes you'll likely have to kick in more money since so little was taken out each paycheck. or perhaps you just end up not getting as much of a refund as you might have been used to if the # of dependents changed this year.

i always recommend putting excess dependents so you get to hold and manage the money over the year but if you don't manage money well this could be a bad idea if you end up owing taxes and you've spent it all!

conversely, if your w-4 is filled out with 0 dependents but you have 3 dependents actually then you're likely to get a large refund

given the uncertainty of the fiat dollar in this current environment I'd suggest getting as large a paycheck each week as you can. you should be able to change this w-4 during the course of the year if you become aware that too much money is being taken out

good luck