Rounding trouble when trying to calculate federal withholding tax for my paycheck

[gertie193]

Hello,

I have created a formula to calculate how much should be withdrawn from my paycheck due to federal withholding tax. The formulas for medicare and social security work fine, but my federal withholding tax is off. Last week it was OVER by $0.41 and this week it is UNDER by $0.73. I know it has to do with rounding but I don't understand rounding. I tried using the ROUND function and also tried just clicking the Increase Decimal and Decrease Decimal buttons but it does not solve the problem.

The formula is quite long and involves referencing a federal withholding table I've created on another worksheet within the same workbook.

Would someone be willing to look at this workbook if I sent it to them? I don't see an option for attaching workbooks to our posts. I need help with rounding or something.

Thank you.

 

[shg]

Does it matter? The IRS is happy to work in whole dollars. If you wanted to be conservative, take the ceiling to the next whole dollar.

 

[gertie193]

For anybody else who responds, I need help with rounding in Excel and/or to figure out what is wrong to maintain my spreadsheet to match it against what my employer is paying me and deducting from my check, which I need to do for a reason.

 

[joeu2004]

I have created a formula to calculate how much should be withdrawn from my paycheck due to federal withholding tax. The formulas for medicare and social security work fine, but my federal withholding tax is off. Last week it was OVER by $0.41 and this week it is UNDER by $0.73.
[....]
Would someone be willing to look at this workbook if I sent it to them? I don't see an option for attaching workbooks to our posts.

I understand why you might want to understand the difference, whether or not it matters. I'm the same way: the point is to understand the method of computation.

Generally, you "attach" a workbook by uploading an example Excel file to a file-sharing website and post the "shared" URL in a response here.

But that might not be a practical approach to resolving this particular problem. Generally, you should scrub any public file of private information. Yet in this case, the problem is very likely related to the private details.

You can send the Excel file, or a "limited access" URL of a file uploaded to a file-sharing website, to me at joeu2004 "at" hotmail.com.

I am very familiar with US withholding rules and practices. With differences that great, I suspect the problem is not merely due to rounding issues. But the devil is in the details. And the resolution might require some back-and-forth questions about them.

 

[gertie193]

I understand why you might want to understand the difference, whether or not it matters. I'm the same way: the point is to understand the method of computation.

Generally, you "attach" a workbook by uploading an example Excel file to a file-sharing website and post the "shared" URL in a response here.

But that might not be a practical approach to resolving this particular problem. Generally, you should scrub any public file of private information. Yet in this case, the problem is very likely related to the private details.

You can send the Excel file, or a "limited access" URL of a file uploaded to a file-sharing website, to me at joeu2004 "at" hotmail.com.

I am very familiar with US withholding rules and practices. With differences that great, I suspect the problem is not merely due to rounding issues. But the devil is in the details. And the resolution might require some back-and-forth questions about them.

Thank you. I will email it to you, and please email me if you have questions. Thank you for taking the trouble to look at this for me.

 

[joeu2004]

Thank you. I will email it to you, and please email me if you have questions.

Yes, there are a couple minor rounding issues.

But as I suspected, the major problem is due to a misunderstanding about how to use or implement the use of the withholding table.

I will send details in email. Just wanted to let you know that I received the file and I'm looking at it. I got distracted and did not get a chance to document my findings.