Why does my military retirement pension raise my tax bill if I correctly paid in all taxes owed during the year?

[cwohardy]

My filing status is married filing jointly. After putting in our W-2's we owe $219. Then I input my Army 1099 R with a gross distribution of 33714.00 and taxes withheld of 2913.60. As soon as I input these numbers TT shows I owe $1116.00.

I checked the tax tables for 2018 and 2913.00 was the proper amount to have been withheld for my withholding status of withhold at higher single rate with only 1 exemption (myself).

Why would my taxed owed go up after inputting this? What am i missing here?

[JulieR · Accepted solution]

The explanation is that the total income shown on your return is a combination of your W-2 and 1099-R incomes along with any other income you may have reported on the return.  Your tax is then calculated by reducing the total income by your deductions to arrive at your taxable income.  

The tax withheld on your 1099-R may be correct, based on the withholding tables, but remember you are taxed on your taxable income, so you may still have had under withholding based on your combined total income. 

[cwohardy]

Do you know where I can find the withholding table for combined total income then? Because I checked each W2 separately against the withholding tables and only 1 of them was under withheld for the 219 I already know about.

[JulieR]

You need to be looking at the Tax Tables, beginning on page 67 of the following IRS 1040 Instructions (<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf">https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf</a>) to calculate the tax on your taxable income.  You should not try to calculate the tax on the income items individually as it won't give you an accurate number.

[cwohardy]

Thank You