I noticed on my kids' dad's check stub that he changed his filing status from single and 0 to married and 14 exemptions.he and I were never married nor has he ever been married. Is that legal? Is it considered tax fraud?

Your filing status on your check stubs primarily affects how much federal & state tax you are accountable for. So filing higher exemptions and dependents (i.e. a wife) will allow his company to pay him with less taxes withheld.

This will bite him in the behind when he files his taxes for 2010, when they appropriately determine his tax liability. When he technically owes say $50 per paycheck in federal taxes and his company was withholding $0, he will have to pay all of his taxes for the year at that time.

I could not tell you if this is considered tax fraud, but it is foolish.

QUOTE," Is that legal? is it considered tax fraud?"---- A you know, employees should give Form W-4 to their employers so that they can provide necessary identifying information to their employers; employees usually want to tell the employers how to withhold taxes from their paychecks.However, withholding is based on marital status and withholding allowances. Form W-4 is given to his employer when he starts work and can be updated at any time during his employment.

His employer is no longer required to send a Form W-4 to the IRS when his employee, your ex-husband, indicates more than a certain number of withholding allowances. Instead, the IRS will send an embarrassing letter to his employer if it finds him, your ex-husband, to be a chronic underpayer. In other words, he's free to do what he wants; he just needs to stop embarrassing himself.

It is definitely not tax fraud, and it MAY be the right thing to do.

ALCON:

Let us NOT be too hasty to condemn this man's decision to claim so many exemptions. He may be doing the right thing from a money management point of view.

Based on Saphi25's posting, the father of her children is apparently NOT her husband. If she and the children live with him, he is probably claiming Head of Household while claiming her and the children as dependents. If this is the case, and depending on his income level, he may not owe ANY income taxes (state or federal) due to a combination of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit, so having ANY money withheld from his salary makes no sense, because he would just get it back when the tax return is filed.

If these assumptions are true, then having NO income tax withheld is the CORRECT and WISE course of action on his part, because he gets to use the money he earns to meet financial obligations rather than loan it interest-free to the U.S. government.

QUOTE," the father of her children is apparently NOT her husband."---Correct! I am sorry; right. He is not actually her husband.

How you list things for taxes to be held out merely regulates how much money they withhold. If you follow what the government wants you to do, often they hold out large amounts and then refund it back to you at the end of the year.

Many, many( did I say many) people think this is not correct to do, and work out that only a small amount to none is held out during the year.
What matters is how they file at the end of the year when they file their taxes. I claim 10 or 12 dependents myself, so that almost nothing comes out of my check, I have enough other deductions and business cost to counter this. I see no reason to allow the IRS to have use of my money at no interest all year to merely take months to give me back my own money.

So no this is not tax fraud and is actually what many people do all the time.