Used Turbo Tax 8 yrs. I'm retired, husband is sole proprietor part time. Turbo shows 4 exemptions in past. No W2s, no taxes held now. When do I change exemptions to 2?

[jchesebro]

No dependents now, kids grown.  Husband pays Self Employment tax and estimated taxes.  We report all 1099-MISC.  Both of us on Soc Sec and I have pensions.  No taxes held.

[SteamTrain]

Depends on what you mean.

As long as your children are no longer listed on you tax return..all should be OK.

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Formal "exemptions" were (kind-of ) eliminated from Federal tax returns last year and "allowances"  that were somewhat equivalent to exemptions, were eliminated from W-4 forms this year.   But you don't need a W-4 anymore anyhow, since neither of you get a W-2, so there is nothing to re-set there.   (Some State tax forms may still use exemptions...but they will be automatically applied based on what you do in the Federal section of the tax return).

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In a way, an exemption # count is still being used on a federal, but that is entirely determined by your indicating that neither of you can be claimed as a dependent....that automatically gives you a MFJ Std Ded of $24,400....then each of your ages, based on your birthdates, can give you added Std Ded $$ of 1,300, for each spouse who is over age 65...for a total Std Ded possible of 27,000.  But these settings are automatically applied by the software, and you don't have to declare anything....(other than not indicating you were claimed as a dependent when you put in your personal information at the beginning of the tax preparation...the MyInfo section if you are using the Online software).

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Now, if you are in a situation where you owe too much at the end of the year, because you don't have any Federal taxes withheld from either your pensions,  or your SS payments....you can either:

1)  Start submitting quarterly estimated taxes to the IRS and state to approximate the total tax that you expect to owe each tax year

and/or

2)  each of you Submit a W-4P to your pension issuers to indicate how much you want to have withheld from your pension payouts.....but note that they use the term "Allowances"  and allowances does not equal exemptions, and can easily be greater than the number of people in your household.  for example, the W-4P form from the IRS  (link below),   on page 4 of the instructions, you start with "2" allowances for yourself..

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/fw4p--2020.pdf

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.....and if you end up wanting more.or.less withheld from each pension payment for paying taxes at the end of the year, you can fudge the allowances entered on line 2 of the W-4P either up or down.  OR...if you want more withheld than the number of allowances indicates, you can stick with the allowance calculations, and then add an additional amount (per pension payment) on line 3 of the W-4P.   AND YES, sometimes it takes some year-to-yer resetting to get the exact amount right.....especially with one spouse doing self-employed work.

Note also, that you don't always have to submit a W-4P to your pension providers...some of them allow you to set those W-4P settings on their website ( Fidelity NetBenefits, allows them to be set online for both Federal and state)

[fanfare]

your exemption count changes when your child is too old to be your dependent any more.