Here’s something I learned at my annual conference. According to the GAO, **31 million** taxpayers are expected to be under withheld for the 2018 tax season. That means an additional 21% of taxpayers are going to OWE tax when their returns are filed instead of getting a refund like last year. Ugh. This is exactly what I was worried about with every one of those “forecasts” we looked at when we reviewed your 2017 tax return.
So, what’s going on here? Remember those promises in early 2018 that everyone was going to see an immediate benefit from the new tax law in the form of bigger paychecks? For most people that was only because they were having a little bit less withheld from their paychecks. Most people did not get a raise or bonus, and in the end the changes made are probably not really going to have much of an effect on the total tax bill. Therefore, your total tax due will be just about the same, but you will have had less withheld, so now you owe money.
There isn’t much we can do about this now. To be honest, there wasn’t much we could do during the year because the calculations are so complicated. What you can do is get in to see me as soon as possible in 2019. That way we have as much time as possible to make adjustments to your withholding for 2019, or have some time to save up a little to pay the taxman.