Purpose

To notify agencies of the new field and the new procedure for entering Federal Tax Data into PayServ

Affected Employees

Married employees who select “Married, but withhold at higher Single rate” on Form W-4, Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate

Background

As part of Oracle’s most recent update of its HRMS application, a new checkbox was added to the Federal Tax Data page to record an employee’s selection of his/her Federal tax status of “Married, but withhold at higher Single rate” on Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate.

This new checkbox is used for informational and reporting purposes only; it has no effect on the calculation of tax withholding in PayServ.

Effective Date(s)

September 26, 2005

OSC Actions

The new checkbox will be added to the Federal Tax Data page in PayServ during a scheduled application update. No data will be populated in this new field.

The Masterfile has been modified to display this new field in column 2592 with a value of Y or N.

Agency Actions

Agencies should update employees’ Federal Tax Data, as necessary, to accurately reflect their tax status as recorded on their Form W-4. Agencies may need to encourage employees to review and update, if necessary, their W-4 information.

To assist agencies in identifying employees for whom the new checkbox may be appropriate, public query FED_TAX_REPORTING_STATUS identifies employees who currently have a status of "Married" on Personal Data and a tax status of "Single" on Federal Tax Data.

When an employee submits a Form W-4 indicating a tax status of "Married, but withhold at the higher Single rate," agencies should take the following steps: 

1. Open Employee Tax Data. Path: Home > Compensate Employees > Maintain Payroll Data (US) > Use > Employee Tax Data.
2. Enter the employee’s Empl ID.
3. Select Federal Tax Data page.
4. Insert a new row.
5. Enter the effective date of the Federal Tax Data change.
6. Under "Federal Withholding Status," select "Single" as the Tax Marital Status.
7. Enter the number of withholding allowances indicated on Form W-4.
8. Click the check box stating "If married, but withholding at single rate, select Single status and check here."
9. Save the page.

Questions

Questions regarding this bulletin may be directed to the Payroll Deductions mailbox.