Federal 2021 Tax Tables

I work in Payroll. An employee showed me their W-2's from 2020 and 2021. In round numbers, they made $42k in 2020 and $52k in 2021. Ever since they started here in early 2020, they have claimed Single, $8,000.

In 2020, $2,500 was withheld for Federal Taxes and in 2021, only $100 was withheld. Does anyone know why this would have occurred? I would have thought their Federal Tax withheld would have been similar from one year to the next. Was there a major change within the Federal IRS tax tables that Sage utilizes?

Thank you, Craig

  • Just a guess, but if you have not checked use W-4 amounts (with $8000.00)  in his setup, that could cause Federal to not be withheld.  You can see if there was a change in the log file.

  • in reply to Rhonda V

    I appreciate the response. That would make sense but Federal was withheld one time during the year - in a week where he worked a ton of OT. It's still a mystery to me. But my guess is that the Federal tax tables changed enough from 2020 to 2021 to cause this to happen.