Why am I not getting my federal withholding from each paycheck back

[xmasbaby0]

Why do you expect to get it all back?   That question indicates you do not understand how the government gets money.    People pay federal and state tax on the income they receive; you do not get a refund of the amounts withheld for Social Security or Medicare.  If more  tax than the amount you owe for your filing status and amount of income was withheld, you get that as a refund.

After you enter everything, if you are getting a federal refund it will be shown on line 35a of your Form 1040.   If you did not have enough tax withheld and you owe, the amount you owe to the IRS will be on line 37.

PREVIEW 1040

https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/tax-return/preview-turbotax-online-retur...

[xmasbaby0]

If you are wondering where the tax you pay goes---start with reading some information and perhaps google some other articles that will explain why you do not just get it all back.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go

[rjs]

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you expect to get a full refund of all the tax that was withheld from your pay? That does not normally happen. As xmasbaby0 said, you have to pay some tax on your income. If the withholding is more than your actual tax you get a refund of the difference, but you don't get all of the withholding back.

Or do you mean that the withholding on your paychecks was not applied towards the tax on your tax return? The total federal tax withholding for the year is in box 2 of your W-2, and goes to Form 1040 line 25a. If it's not there, you may have entered the box 2 amount incorrectly in TurboTax, or not entered it at all.