New W4 Processing#

Beginning with the 2020 Form W-4, employees are no longer able to request adjustments to their withholding using withholding allowances. Instead, using the new Form W-4, employees provide employers with amounts to increase or decrease the amount of taxes withheld and amounts to increase or decrease the amount of wage income subject to income tax withholding.

Government Website #

For full instructions and information about the 2020 W-4, please refer to the most recent Publication 15-T, Federal Income Tax Withholding Methods at: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15t.pdf

For a PDF of the 2020 W-4 Preview, visit: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

The following is a list of the processes that are used to set up the Federal W4 Forms:

Maintain US Tax Filing Information Forms#

The IPRLUS has been enhanced into two new screens

  • IPW4F - Maintain US Federal Tax Filing Information
    • This form will have only Federal Misc Parm entries
  • IPW4S - Maintain US State Tax Filing Information
    • This form will have only the State Misc Parm entries

The Self-Service employee screen WERLUS has been enhanced into two new screens
  • WEPW4F- My Federal Tax Filing Information
    • This Employee self service screen will allow the employee to enter or update only the FEDERAL Misc Parm values
    • Personnel Actions (PAs) are available on this form to handle employee changes to their Federal information
      • setup ISFPT for function WEPW4F
  • WEPW4S - My State Tax Filing Information
    • This Employee self service screen will allow the employee to enter or update only the State Misc Parm values
    • Personnel Actions (PAs) are available on this form to handle employee changes to their information by State
      • setup ISFPT for function WEPW4S

On the IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S screens, during Insert/Update mode, the process calls the PPRLU logic to create the new Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters, according to the IMCT ‘UPRLU MAPPING’ Code, if these tax parameters do not exist

On the IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S screens, employees can optionally enter the 2020 W4 Form values, if these Miscellaneous Tax Parameter values are not already defined from previous year's W4 set up

This means employees only need to enter any new W4 Form values, otherwise the previous W4 Form values are carried forward to the new 2020 W4 Form.

IMST SETUP REQUIRED

The new Site Preference 'US IPRLUS W4 OPTION' has been created to allow users to define how to setup the Federal W4 Form and State W4 information and determine which forms will be used for your employees.

  • 00, Null - Both the Federal-W4 and State-W4 information can be setup on the IPRLUS Default entry and State entry
  • 01 - Federal-W4 and State-W4 information is setup on separate forms for Federal IPW4F/WEPW4F and IPW4S/WEPW4S forms by State.

When this Preference is turned on (value set to '01'), then not only will the new forms be available to the employees to use, but the UPCALC will create the IPW4F/IPW4S records, if they do no already exist.

W4 fields#

The Federal W4 Form tax parameters are listed below and correspond to the Misc Parameters on the new forms IPW4F/WEPW4F and IPW4S/WEPW4S:

2020_W4

  • 2020_W4 determines whether the 2019 or 2020 W-4 calculations will be used.
  • 2020_W4 defaults to FALSE on IMCT
  • If set to FALSE, the Federal tax calculations will use the 2019 W4 FILINGSTATUS and TOTALALLOWANCES parameters.
  • When an employee has filed the 2020 W4 Form with the employer, this 2020_W4 tax parameter MUST be set to ‘TRUE’
  • When the employee is being paid with Pay Issue Date after January 1, 2020, UPCALC will pass these W4 Federal Misc. Tax Parameter to Symmetry
  • When employee is being paid prior to January 1, 2020, these tax parameters will not be passed to Symmetry
FILINGSTATUS
  • This tax parameter corresponds to Line 1(c) of the 2020 W-4 form, with an additional option for calculations for nonresident alien filing status.
  • FILINGSTATUS defaults to ufed_filing_status from IMCT as follows:
    decode (p2k_ppuprlu.k_ppru.ufed_filing_status,'01','S','02','M','03','H','04','S','05','NRA','S')
TWO_JOBS
  • This tax parameter corresponds to the checkbox in Line 2(c) of the 2020 W-4 form.
  • TWO_JOBS defaults to FALSE on IMCT
DEPENDENTS_AMT
  • This tax parameter corresponds to the total value for Line 3 of the 2020 W-4 form ("Claim Dependents").
  • DEPENDENTS_AMT defaults to 0 on IMCT
OTHER_INCOME
  • This tax parameter corresponds to Line 4(a) of the 2020 W-4 form ("Other income")
  • OTHER_INCOME defaults to 0 on IMCT
DEDUCTIONS
  • This tax parameter corresponds to Line 4(b) of the 2020 W-4 form ("Deductions")
  • DEDUCTIONS defaults to 0 on IMCT
TOTALALLOWANCES (for 2019 only)
  • This tax parameter is used for the 2019 W4 Form Tax calculation only
  • TOTALALLOWANCES defaults to ufed_num_exemptions from IMCT

UPCALC / Trial Calc Processing#

Trial Calc#

  • If the Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters do not exist on IPRLUS, Trial Calc calls the PPRLU logic to create the new Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters for the Trial Calculation, and the Miscellaneous Tax Parameters are rolled back

UPCALC#

  • If the Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters do not exist on IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S, Trial Calc calls the PPRLU logic to create the new Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters for the Federal Tax Calculation. The Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters are committed on the IPW4F / WEPW4F screens
  • When the Pay Header’s Pay Issue Date is after Jan-01-2020, UPCALC retrieves the IPRLUS Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters to pass to Symmetry for the Federal tax calculation
  • When the Pay Issue Date is prior to Jan-01-2020, UPCALC will not retrieve the IPRLUS Federal Miscellaneous Tax Parameters to pass to Symmetry for the Federal tax calculation
  • The IPW4F Misc Parm '2020-W4' from Symmetry should be set to 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' to define which option of the W4 Form is used
  • UPCALC calculates the Federal tax based on how the Symmetry Tax Engine uses the IPW4F Federal W4 Form parameters.
  • The IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S process automatically generates the Federal W4 Form parameters by calling the PPRLU logic:
    • For employees who submit the new W4 form, the W4 Form parameters should be manually entered on the IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S screens
    • For employees using the previous W4 form, the system will default the W4 Form values for Symmetry
    • These are fully built into the UPRLU / IMCT / UPCALC logic
    • For existing employees, run UPRLU to create the new Federal W4 parameters for IPRLUS
    • For newly hired employees, users should enter information on IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S as usual
    • During IPW4F / IPW4S and WEPW4F / WEPW4S Insert/Update mode the process calls PPRLU to generate the Federal W4 Form Miscellaneous Parameters automatically

UPSTUBs#

  • On the Pay Stubs, in the 'Tax Filing Information' section, the values will be determined as follows:
    • for the Federal, the new IPW4F/WEPW4F Miscellaneous Parameter values will be used
    • For the State, the new IPW4F/WEPW4F Miscellaneous Parameter values will NOT be used (no State details are printed on the Pay Stubs)

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Notes#

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This particular version was published on 15-Dec-2023 13:01 by Karen Parrott.Top