Originally Posted by iccky

Alright, bit of a complicated tax withholding question for my girlfriend. She is just graduating from college. This summer she's programming for an educational software company and getting paid a lot, and then she goes to grad school and gets a crappy grad student stipend. So her income by month is roughly:

January-April: $150 a month for student job
May: nothing
Jun-August: about $4000 a month from software company
September-December: About $1500 a month from grad school stipend

So the problem is that for three months in the summer her tax withholding will be figured on an annual income of almost 50 grand, far more then she'll actually be making. If she puts in the two withholding exemptions she's supposed to based on the worksheet on a W-4, they'll withhold almost as much in one month as she'll actually owe for the entire year. Can she just arbitrarily claim 6 exemptions so that the amount withheld will be closer to what she'll actually owe?