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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 2252341" data-attributes="member: 5122">Nope, although I wasn't as clear as I could have been.While it is true that adjusting your W-4 is permitted and encouraged (see IRS Pub. 919 -- <a href="http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p919.pdf)" target="_blank">http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p919.pdf)</a>, a taxpayer is still required to submit the "true,  correct and complete" number of allowances, as calculated through the various worksheets.  So if the taxpayer has demostrably submitted too few allowances, then recalculates them properly and submits another W-4, that's perfectly fine.But what you seem to be saying is that if a taxpayer believes he is overpaying his taxes -- from past results, or from the advice of a friend, or whatever -- he can assume that he has, by definition, incorrectly calculated his allowances, and that's just not true.  (Pub. 919 has some notes on this.  E.g., "You can only claim the number of allowances to which you are entitled.")  If the taxpayer claims allowances to which he isn't entitled through the worksheets and signs the W-4, he's perjured himself, even if his estimations are dead-on to his actual tax liability (or lack of same).The IRS does not want to allow or encourage taxpayers to overestimate their allowances (because that obviously impacts revenue negatively); if "guesstimating" allowances were allowed, everyone could legally claim a huge number of allowances (and, logically speaking, should), and that's just not gonna fly with Internal Revenue.Is it "fair" to guesstimate tax liability and fudge allowances to match?  Maybe.  (It's my opinion that the contemplation of taxation vis a vis morality or justice is an invitation to an address on Insanity Boulevard.)  I'm not a tax lawyer, so I'm not even sure if the act of guesstimating allowances is illegal.  (I doubt good faith estimation rises to the level of fraud, for instance.)  But the perjury is illegal, however unlikely prosecution may be.</blockquote>

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