How do I know if I am exempt from withholding on taxes?

The criteria are trying to help you figure out whether you were obligated to pay taxes last year and whether you think you will have to pay taxes this year.

In practical terms, did you pay any taxes last year? Did you have taxes withheld and then get them all refunded? If you're a dependent (living with you parents) and you made less than $5950 you don't even have to file.

There is a lot of good information here;

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p929/ar02.html

Most states follow the same rules.

Good Luck

It is fairly clear you just have to think logically. Maybe they took that out of schools with everything else. If you had no job last year then you did not have a tax liability. Pretty obvious. Do you expect to have a tax liability this year? If you earn less than the personal exemption then you will have no tax liability this year. This year the personal exemption is 6100.

what it means is if you filed a tax return last year and did not owe anything, you can file exempt the following year if you do not anticipate earning your standard deduction, $6100

this is related to your Federal tax return

if you are referring to your state return, you need to see what your standard deduction is for a dependent in your state to determine if you think you will make more than that, the excess will be taxable and you are not exempt for your state

if you have worked you need to see what your W-2's amounted to for those jobs and if income tax was withheld, there is a strong possibility that you might be due some refunds if you filed those returns.

If your are a W2 employee then taxes and other monies are taken from your check. If you make less than $9700 per year you don't need to file or pay taxes. But you would want to file taxes because you will get the money back if you do file taxes. However, your parents may get more back using you as a dependant we they file taxes. What I do every year to be fair to my children is I go to turbotax.com and see how much each one of my children whould get back and since I using them as a dependent they can't file so I pay them the amount they would have recieved if they filed their own taxes. I sure your parents are doing the same thing. Because it is not fair that they don't pay you what you would get if you filed your own taxes. Good Luck!!

If your total income this year will be under $6100, you can put exempt, otherwise put 0 allowances.