An employee can adjust the amount of his or her withholding at any time. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form W-4, the Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate, determines the tax withheld from your pay by your employer. Thus, anyone can increase or decrease the withholding amount by filling out a new W-4 and giving it to your employer. Complete a new W-4 for each job for which you are adjusting your withholding. You can obtain blank W-4 forms from your employer(s) or from the IRS (PDF) Website “Form W-4”.

Withholding amounts can be increased by:

--  Decreasing the number of allowances claimed on Line 5 of Form W-4

--  Indicating an additional amount to be withheld on Line 6 of Form W-4.

Increase your withholding amounts by:

--  Increasing the number of allowances claimed on Line 5 of Form W-4

--  Decreasing any additional amount that is being withheld on Line 6 of Form W-4.

You can only claim the number of allowances to which a person is entitled. If you change your number of withholding allowances during the year, your employer may be willing to use the cumulative wage withholding method for the remainder of the year. In this way, you do not have too little or too much money withheld from your pay. Thus, you must file a new Form W-4 with your employer within ten days of:

--  A change in your filing status to single.

--  A decrease in the number of withholding allowances claimed.

If events in the current year will decrease the number of withholding allowances for the following year, you must provide your employer with a new Form W-4 by December 1st of the current year or within 10 days, if the event occurs in December of the current year. You can obtain more information and worksheets for adjusting your withholding amounts from the Web site IRS Publication 919 (PDF) titled “How Do I Adjust My Tax Withholding?”