My husband received his W-2 for last year from a job that he worked for 4/5 months. It showed that there were no federal taxes taken out. The total income was approx. $16,000. Will this be damaging to our tax return? Briefing synopsis: 3 kids, renters & total income including the 16,000 would be approximately $70,000.

Your total personal exemptions is $18,250, while your joint standard deduction is $11,400, so $29,650 of your income is tax-exempt.

The remaining $41,000 will be assessed taxes of about $5,300, but you are probably getting $3,000 in Child Tax Credits plus $800 for Making Work Pay credits, so your actual tax will be around $1,500.

If you had more than $1,500 withheld from other paychecks, you will still get a refund, albeit a smaller one than anticipated.

If not, I suspect you can handle a $1,500 tax bill, especially considering you have six weeks to get the money together.