Should I be claiming more than 1 exemption?
"It's not possible to determine whether you can ""expect a refund"" or whether you are claiming the right number of exemptions from the information given.   If your wife were not working and you did not do independent contracting, then the answer would be much simpler.  However, in this case, we must also factor in how much your contracting brings in (since you must pay income tax on that, as well as Medicare and, probably, Social Security), whether you are filing jointly or separately, and your wife's income from her business.   There are also other factors such as whether you'll be claiming certain child care expenses, and certain tax credits which may phase out depending on your income.   If you can accurately estimate your total household income for the year, and separate that into income from wages, contracting, and your wife's business, as well as your expenses for things like state and local income and property taxes, then you can make a very reasonable estimate about your total tax burden (including the self-employment taxes on your non-wage income) and then determine whether you are having enough tax withheld from your paycheck.  Some people may find that they should have additional tax withheld to compensate for these expenses (see IRS W-4 Line #6)." "J - Approaching the answer from the W4 perspective (for calculation purposes) may be more trouble that it's worth. I'd strongly suggest you use tax software, whether it's the 2016 SW or a current year one, on line, to get an estimate of your total tax bill for the year. You can then look at your current run rate of tax paid in to see if you are on track. If you have a large shortfall, you can easily adjust your withholdings. If you are on track to get a large refund, make the adjustment so next year will track better. Note, a withholding allowance is equal to a personal exemption. Some think that ""4"" means 4 people in the house, but it actually means ""don't tax 4 x $4050"" as I have $16200 in combined people or tax deductions."
"1 - in most cases, the difference between filing joint or married filing single is close to zero. When there is a difference you're better off filing joint.  2 - The way the W4 works is based on how many allowances you claim. Unfortunately, even in the day of computers, it does not allow for a simple ""well my deduction are $xxx, don't tax that money."" Each allowance is equal to one exemption, same as you get for being you, same as the wife gets, same as each kid. 3 people X $3800 = $11,400 you are telling the employer to take off the top before calculating your tax. She does this by using Circular E and is able to calculate your tax as you request. If one is in the 15% bracket, one more exemption changes the tax withheld by $570. So if you were going to owe $400 in April, one few exemption will have you overpay $170. i.e. in this 15% bracket, each exemption changes annual withholding by that $570.  For most people, running the W4 numbers will get them very close, and only if they are getting back or owing over $500, will they even think of adjusting.  3 - My recently published Last Minute Tax Moves offers a number of interesting ideas to address this. The concept of grouping deductions in odd years is worth noting.  4 - I'm not sure what this means, 2 accounts each worth $5000 should grow at the same rate if invested the same. The time it makes sense to load one person's account first is if they have better matching. You say you are not sure what percent your wife's company matches. You need to change this. For both of your retirement plans you need to know every detail, exact way to maximize matching, expense ratios for the investments you choose, any other fees, etc. Knowledge is power, and all that. In What is an appropriate level of 401k fees or expenses in a typical plan? I go on to preach about how fees can wipe out any tax benefit over time. For any new investor, my first warning is always to understand what you are getting into. If you can't explain it to a friend, you shouldn't be in it.  Edit - you first need to understand what choices are within the accounts. The 4% and 6% are in hindsight, right? These are not fixed returns. You should look at the choices and more heavily fund the account with the better selection. Deposit to her account at least to grab the match.  As far as the longer term goals, see how the house purchase goes. Life has a way of sending you two kids and forcing you to tighten the budget. You may have other ideas in three years. (I have no P2P lending experience, by the way.)  Last - many advise that separate finances are a bad path for a couple. It depends. Jane and I have separate check books, and every paycheck just keep enough to write small checks without worry, most of the money goes to the house account. Whatever works for you is what you should do. We've been happily married for most of the 17 years we've been married." "Can I use the foreign earned income exclusion in my situation? Only partially, since the days you spent in the US should be excluded. You'll have to prorate your exclusion limit, and only apply it to the income earned while not in the US. If not, how should I go about this to avoid being doubly taxed for   2014? The amounts you cannot exclude are taxable in the US, and you can use a portion of your Norwegian tax to offset the US tax liability. Use form 1116 for that. Form 1116 with form 2555 on the same return will require some arithmetic exercises, but there are worksheets for that in the instructions. In addition, US-Norwegian treaty may come into play, so check that out. It may help you reduce the tax liability in the US or claim credit on the US taxes in Norway. It seems that Norway has a bilateral tax treaty with the US, that, if   I'm reading it correctly, seems to indicate that ""visiting researchers   to universities"" (which really seems like I would qualify as) should   not be taxed by either country for the duration of their stay. The relevant portion of the treaty is Article 16. Article 16(2)(b) allows you $5000 exemption for up to a year stay in the US for your salary from the Norwegian school. You will still be taxed in Norway. To claim the treaty benefit you need to attach form 8833 to your tax return, and deduct the appropriate amount on line 21 of your form 1040. However, since you're a US citizen, that article doesn't apply to you (See the ""savings clause"" in the Article 22). I didn't even give a thought to state taxes; those should only apply   to income sourced from the state I lived in, right (AKA $0)? I don't know what State you were in, so hard to say, but yes - the State you were in is the one to tax you. Note that the tax treaty between Norway and the US is between Norway and the Federal government, and doesn't apply to States. So the income you earned while in the US will be taxable by the State you were at, and you'll need to file a ""non-resident"" return there (if that State has income taxes - not all do)." "I realize. I never would claim I did a ... ""triple"" full time (?). I was responding to the comment that any credible university wouldn't let you do more than +1 extra class. Obviously, +1 class in terms of hours is variable since it can range from 3-8 hours at a traditional semester university. Our recommended was something like 18 though the upper limit was 20 IIRC (been awhile)." "I believe that your option contracts will become ""non-standard"" and will be for a combination of ACE stock and cash.  The allocation between stock and cash should follow that of the acquisition parameters of the underlying - probably with fractional shares converted to cash. Hence 1 call contract for 100 shares of CB will become 1 call contract for 60 shares of ACE + $6293 cash + a cash correction for the 0.19 fractional share of ACE that you would have had claim to get.  The corrections should be 0.19 sh x $62.93/sh." Your employer pays the expected (but estimated) taxes for you. So the chances are you don't own more; but that might be different if you have other sources of income that he doesn't know about (interest on savings or a side-job or whatever). Also, you could have deductions that reduce the taxes you owe, which he again doesn't know, so you overpay. If you don't file, you don't get them back. Most tax software companies offer free usage of their tool for standard filings, and you can use it to find out your tax situation, and then buy the tool only when you want to file. If you use one of those, you can type in all your data, and depending on the result, decide to buy it and file right away. Note that if it turns out you owe taxes, you must file (and pay), but of course you can do it manually instead of buying the tool. If it turns out you get money back, it is your decision to file - you probably don't care for a small amount, but if you get 1000 $ back, you might want to file - again, buying the software of doing it manually. "You don't actually have to make four equal payments on US federal taxes; you can pay different amounts each quarter.  To avoid penalties, you must have paid ""enough"" at the end of each quarter.  If you pay too much in an early quarter, the surplus counts towards the amount due in later quarters.  If you have paid too little as of the end of a quarter, that deficit counts against you for interest and penalties until it is made up in later quarters (or at year-end settlement). How much is ""enough""?  There are a number of ways of figuring it.  You can see the list of exceptions to the penalty in the IRS documentation.  Using unequal payments may require more complicated calculation methods to avoid or reduce penalties at year-end.  If you have the stomach for it, you may want to study the Annualized Income Installment Method to see how uneven income might affect the penalty." "I did a little research and found this article from 2006 by a Villanova law professor, titled ""No Thanks, Uncle Sam, You Can Keep Your Tax Break"".  The final paragraph of the article says: Under these circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that a taxpayer is not required to claim a allowable deduction unless a statutory provision so requires, or a binding judicial precedent so specifies. It would be unwise, of course, to forego a deduction that the IRS considers mandatory such as those claimed by self-employed individuals with respect to their self-employment,    whether for purposes of the self-employment tax or the earned income tax credit. Until the statute is changed or some other binding authority is issued, there is no reason taxpayers who wish to forego deductions, such as the dependency exemption deduction, should hesitate in doing so. (The self-employment tax issues in the quote cited by CQM are explicitly discussed in the article as one of a few special kinds of deduction which are mandatory.) This is not a binding statement: it's not law or even official IRS policy.  You could never use it as a defense in the event that this professor turned out to be wrong and the IRS decided to go after you anyway.  However, it is a clear statement from a credible, qualified source." For most people the standard deduction makes all of those itemized deductions (like state taxes paid) moot because they add up to less.  If he's doubling the standard deduction, then you'd need a lot more things to be deductible before it would be worth itemizing.  As for what you're proposing, It sounds like it would be beneficial to a lot of people.  I wonder what the total tax revenues would be for it.