<prompt> Human: Im 17, soon turning 18, and I got a job at Target recently. I recently got my second paycheck, and technically my first real paycheck of this job My first paycheck was just a week worth of work. So I was flipping through it, and my 590 paycheck was reduced to only 460. Over 100 was taken off, 20 of my paycheck was taxed. Did I mess something up on my W4W2s? I claimed 0 allowances on my federal W4 and 0 on my state W4.  <response>: The withholding system sees your 590 check and presumes that if you get 26 such paychecks in a year, your income is 15340. If you are a dependent, 6300 of that wont be taxed, leaving 9040 taxable income, and that would have tax of 904 because it is in 10 bracket. Since 90426 is about 35, you would expect 35 in federal withholding, and that is indeed what Publication 15 table shows on page 50 would be withholding for someone getting 590 biweekly who selected 1 allowance.Suppose that you expect to only work at this job next year for 8 months. Maybe you get 17 paychecks of 590. That is a yearly income of 10030. Subtract 6300 to get 3730 taxable. That would mean income tax of 373. Since 37317 21.94, you would want to use an allowances setting that takes 22 out per check. Looking in the same row in Pub 15 page 50, you find that using 2 allowances takes out 19 per check. Close enough. So in that scenario of just working 8 months in 2017, using 2 allowances would be right. Youd pay in 19 17 323 via withholding, and pay 50 at tax time.Note that this is okay to do. You are not somehow implying that you are not a dependent, nor are you implying that you have a dependent child. Both of which are other reasons you might change from 1 allowance to 2 allowances. You are simply adjusting your allowance number so that what gets taken out is a fairly close match to what you owe. 