Based on your paystub which you have provided, to summarize:
- You are paid an hourly rate of $17.5 and you work 80 hours for every two weeks. Based on that assumption your gross income for 2022 will be approximately $36,400 ($17.5 x 2080(hours worked in a year based on 40 hours/week)).
- Based on your paystub, $71.15 is the federal withholding for every pay check. Since you are paid bi-weekly and pay $71.15 for every 2 weeks, based on this assumption, the total federal withholding which will be done for 2022 would be $1849.9 ($71.15 for per pay period and there will be 26 pay periods in the year so $71.15 x 26).
To summarize your gross income for 2022 would be $36,400 and your total federal withholding would be $1,849.9
Based on the 2022 numbers, the standard deduction for single filers is $12,950. What this means is that the first $12,950 of income is tax free and you are not required to pay any tax on it.
Gross Income -----------------------------------------$36,400
Less Standard Deduction--------------------------$(12,950)
Taxable Income----------------------------------------$23,450
Based on the tax brackets, for single filers and the total taxable income of $23,450 (see above), the first $10,275 of the income will be taxed at 10% and the remaining $13,175 ($23,450-$10,275) will be taxed at 12%. The total tax which you would be required to pay is around $2,608.
Now if you compare with the withholdings you are projected to do for the year it is $1,849.
So based on the numbers above, you are required to pay $2,608 and you would have only withheld $1,849 which means you would owe about $759.
Based on these calculations you can see that you are not withholding enough and hence you would be owing money when you file the tax return. There is no perfect answer to this question since if you would like to owe less at tax filing time, you can increase your withholding by filing a Form W-4 with your payroll department. However, this will reduce the current paycheck which you will get.
The above numbers are simply assumptions and approximations and are not exact numbers. This above calculation is done with assumptions and the purpose was to show you how the calculations are being done.
