<prompt> Human: I just did my taxes for the first time, Im so disappointed... Ive always been claimed by my parents; but not this year. I thought this was the time we workers got money back, not owe even more money... I feel so uneducated. My parents always told me to claim myself, now that I think about it, that would make sense since they were claiming me. My question: What will accumulate me more money in the long run, setting allowances to 0 or 1?Ex: If I work 10 years claiming myself vs 10 years not claiming myself; whatll net me more money even after tax time?  <response>: Your allowance number does not change the tax you pay for the year.It just changes how much you prepay during the year before the tax day squaring up. If you use a low allowance number, you send a lot of payment in during the year, and if you send in too much you get a refund. If you use a high allowances number you send in less during the year, but then owe some at tax day. Either way at the end of everything, the total tax you spent as an outgoing expense is the same. If you are single with 1 job and no dependents, using 2 allowances in 2018 will tell the system you expect 12000 of your income wont be taxed. That is the standard deduction. It figures your annual tax then on annual income 12000 and divides that tax by number of paychecks you get in a year.Moving to a different number of allowances just conveys to the system to consider a larger or smaller amount of your income to be untaxed. Each allowance counts like 4150 of change in income. If you pretend a larger amount of income will be untaxed, by increasing allowances, your withholding goes down because system thinks your taxable income will be less. That could lead to you needing to pay in at tax day. 