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Additional exemptions to claim to compensate for additional deductions from taxable income

My wife and I have a $20k net loss from our rentals.  It is my understanding I can 'increase' my deductions on my W4 (to wit, line 4b) to compensate for the expected decrease in taxable income.  However, when I use the TT withholding calculator at   https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/calculators/w4/   it doesn't seem to allow me to increase deductions from income (?); and when I use the IRS calculator at https://apps.irs.gov/app/tax-withholding-estimator/about-you and I arbitrarily deduct as Alimony our $20K anticipated net loss (Deduct as Alimony bc the IRS software doesn't list "Other AGI deductions".  Nonetheless, when I prepare our anticipated tax refund w/o any loss and compare it to a second attempt with an anticipated loss, I received an anticipated refund amount of, say, $5000, as an example.  How do I take into consideration the anticipated refund?  Do I divide the $5K by the allowable personal exemption amount?  This isn't an option bc we no longer have personal exemption amounts... What is the solution of the W4 approach to anticipate additional anticipated deductions?  Reason being is I want to decrease my taxable income and increase the "savings" amount into my 401K deduction.  It used to be the available approach was to divide your anticipated refund by the exemption amount, but that no longer seems possible.

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5 Replies
DanielV01
Expert Alumni

Additional exemptions to claim to compensate for additional deductions from taxable income

@John F  I'm not exactly sure what you are looking to accomplish.  Are you trying to estimate your taxes for tax year 2020 (which files in 2021), or are you determining 2019?  I ask because W-4 calculations for 2019 would seem virtually moot at this point (since the year is almost over and you have had 95% of your withholdings already deducted from your paycheck.  However, if you are calculating 2020, are you anticipating a $20K loss on your rentals for 2020, or are you using 2019 figures?  I think I can give you an answer to your question but would need assistance with these variables.

 

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Additional exemptions to claim to compensate for additional deductions from taxable income

I am trying to accomplish this for 2020 (next year).  Albeit, I can't use either TT or IRS calculators until early January (since both W4 calculators say it's too late for 2019 (Which I agree with)).  I am wanting to decrease my 2020 withholdings for the anticipated refund difference between not having an real estate loss vs. my actual, anticipated net loss' effect.

 

Ideally, I would increase my 401K contribution (thus affect net taxes withheld each pay period) to increase my take home pay in anticipation of not needing the additional withholdings.

 

Thank you for responding and working with me!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Additional exemptions to claim to compensate for additional deductions from taxable income

i am providing a link to the IRS w-4 for 2020.   step 4 line 4b is where the rental loss will 

 

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

 

 

here's a suggestion if your return is rather simple

 

tax a piece of paper.   write down your estimated 2020   salary

subtract from this the estimated rental loss and itemized or standard deduction

this is your taxable income.  

 

compute your tax using the 2020 tax rate schedule

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2019/11/06/irs-releases-2020-tax-rate-tables-standard-...

 

from this tax subtract $2000 for each qualifying child under 17

for other dependents (you are not a dependent) subtract $500

 

 

this should give you a decent estimate of what you need withheld  

 

note that using your reduction in withholding to increase your 401K contribution has the effect odf reducing your taxable income.

 

 

what i propose is for very simple situations .

 

do note that if your income is too high, your rental real estate loss deduction might be limited.   

 

 

DanielV01
Expert Alumni

Additional exemptions to claim to compensate for additional deductions from taxable income

It depends.  Let me give you a hypothetical with numbers to see if I understand your question and what you are looking to accomplish.  You are basically saying you are anticipating a larger refund than what you want, and you wish to "reinvest" the refund (as it were) by reducing your withholdings next year (2020) in order to have more take-home pay, correct?

 

So, let's say that you earn 100,000/year, and your wife has a separate, smaller job earning 40K.  Normally you have 5K (for instance) withheld for 401K.  What you want to do is use the tax calculator to state that you are going to "elect" additional 401(k) withholdings to trick the system into lowering your income and therefore lower the tax withheld, even though in the end you actually are not going to increase the 401(k) deferral election.  I don't believe this will get the effect you want, although it is a good way of looking at the tax effect of the rental loss.

 

You can use TaxCaster (click on link) to estimate the 2019 tax results.  While there is no 2020 estimator tool as of now, the 2020 tax season, as it stands now, does not rate to be very different from 2019.  (The brackets might be slightly more generous, and the standard deduction slightly larger).  But the taxes will be very similar (unless Congress comes up with legislation...you know how that goes.  We're not anticipating anything earthshattering in 2020, but you never know).  If you use the estimator, set your withholdings to zero; you are only interested in how much tax you have to pay for the year.  Subtract what is withheld from your wife's paycheck, and then you know how much tax liability you will have to cover.  

 

Next step is to know what is your gross taxable pay per paycheck.  If you are salaried, you should have consistent amounts deducted.  Your taxable pay will be your gross pay minus 401(k) deferrals and pre-tax health insurance premiums.  (Take into account any other pre-tax deductions you may have, such as an HSA funded through deferrals).  Determine how much tax you must defer each pay period to reach your target.  For instance, let's say your new adjusted tax (the target you want to hit after taking into account the rental loss) is $9800, and your wife anticipates $2,000 of withholdings from her paycheck.  The total amount of Federal tax you need withheld from your paycheck is $7800 and you are paid bi-weekly, 26 weeks for the year.  You would need your pay-period Federal withholding to total $300 biweekly.  Using your taxable biweekly figures, you can look up the withholdings on the following chart:  2019 Publication 15 - Internal Revenue Service.  (Click on link, and the biweekly withholding charts are located on pages 52-55.  If your taxable periodic income is higher than the periodic amounts listed on the table, then you can go back to page 46 to determine the amount tax on higher income amounts per period).  The goal is to find out which allowance amount gets you the closest to the target you want to achieve in connection with the withholding status (married, or married, but withhold at higher single rate) you choose to use.

 

The tax withholding estimator tool for the IRS does not do this for you, yet.  The reason is because we are so close to the end of the calendar year and it doesn't allow you to project forward using 2020 dates.  If you need to do this exercise now, you will have to use the reference above to make manual calculations.  The IRS tool should be available early in 2020.  If using the charts manually is too complicated, you may want to wait until early January to run the same exercise, and then adjust your withholdings accordingly.

 

 

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Carl
Level 15

Additional exemptions to claim to compensate for additional deductions from taxable income

My wife and I have a $20k net loss from our rentals.

That is not at all unusual at all. In fact, it's extremely *rare* for rental property to *ever* show a taxable profit; especially if there's a mortgage on the property.

Do understand however that since rental income is passive, so are the rental losses. Therefore your passive losses can only be deducted from the passive income. Once those passive losses get your taxable passive income to zero, that's it. You're done. Any excess passive losses are automatically carried over to the next year where they are deducted *IF* you have the passive income to deduct them from. (That would be rare).

So generally your passive loss carry overs will just get larger with each passing year. Now in the tax year you sell the property, that's when you will "realize" all those carry over losses. In the year you sell, all of your carry over lossses can be claimed against/deducted from all "other" ordinary income.

So more than likely your rental activity will have absolutely no effect either way, on your tax liability for the 2019 tax season.

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