Claiming zero and we still have to pay thousands of dollars is owed taxes?

[chipc0310]

Hello,

Why doesn't claiming zero seem to help? My wife and I are teachers, and each year, our tax situation seems to get worse and worse, and we still owe more taxes. 

Any suggestions are welcome.

Chip

[rjs]

I'm not sure what you mean by "claiming zero." Withholding allowances were eliminated from Form W-4 five years ago. You no longer "claim 0" or any other number of allowances. The new form works differently. As a guess, the problem might be that you are not accounting for the fact that you both work. You can use the Tax Withholding Estimator on the IRS web site to figure out what you and your wife should each put on the W-4 forms that you give to your employers. It will show you how to adjust your withholding to get the approximate refund amount that you want.

[NCperson]

@chipc0310 the biggest issue I see from similar situations is that taxpayers with multiple W-2s fail to complete Step 2 of the W-4 form correctly.  and that leads to owing taxes in April. 

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

but as @rjs states, use the Withholding Estimator to do this correctly.  Upon completion it will tell you exactly how each of you should complete the W-4.