Can my employer change my federal withholdings without my consent?

[Rachel_W]

No, an Employer should not change your Federal Withholdings without your consent unless they receive a letter from the IRS stating they must do so.  In this case, the IRS would also send you a copy of the letter.

Other than an order from the IRS, your Employer should not change your Federal Withholdings except when you submit a new Form W-4.  

Keep in mind, tax rates for 2018 will be lower, so your Federal Withholdings will be lower as well.  The IRS recently changed the Federal Withholding tables to reflect the change in tax rates.

[mommywith3ms]

Does the employee have any legal action that he can take for this?  When the employee asked the payroll department why his taxes were different (and he was OVER withheld instead of under), the answer he got was "I don't know what happened".  On top of that, the employer doesn't give pay stubs (and WON'T provide one even if asked) so the only way they know they're different is by checking their bank account to see what's been deposited.  Please provide any guidance or resources you can to help with this.  Thank you!!

[macuser_22]

@mommywith3ms - Labor laws are different in every state.   That employer may well be violating one or more labor laws.  That question  is best asked to the state labor board (or whatever state agency oversees labor laws in your state).

[mommywith3ms]

We're in Wisconsin.  Thank you for the advice.  We will contact them and see what we can find out.

[TomD8]

<<...and he was OVER withheld instead of under...>>

If he was over-withheld, he'll get the over-withheld amount back with his tax refund.  Much better to be over-withheld than under-withheld.  

[mommywith3ms]

That may be true, but he is already not bringing home enough money to make ends meet so he really can't spare the extra money to go to the government!

[TomD8]

Hasn’t the payroll department corrected the situation, now that it’s been brought to their attention?

[dmertz]

Although an employer is to take into account in the calculation of withholding the number of withholding allowances that you specify on the most recent Form W-4 that you've provided to your employer, there are various methods that the employer can use to calculate the withholding that can result in possibly differing amounts of withholding for a given amount of wages per pay period.  Wages that vary from pay period to pay period could also result in a varying percentage of withholding due to the way withholding is calculated.  (Withholding cannot be specified to be a particular percentage of wages.)  I wouldn't expect an employer to constantly vary the choice of calculation method, but I don't see anything in the IRS guidance that explicitly prohibits doing so.

See Chapter 9 of IRS Pub 15-A:  https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15a.pdf

Being paid supplemental wages such as a bonus can also substantially affect the percentage of pay that goes to withholding for a particular pay period depending on whether the employer chooses to report the supplemental wages combined with regular wages or report the supplemental wages separately subject to a flat 22% federal withholding rate.