a&w restaurant: Does the government: hold out on you, not refund or money at all, or give you the whole refund?|||The government doesn't hold out on people. Every dollar is taxed the same for every person, every deduction is calculated the same for everyone. It's just simple math calculations. You owe what the math says you owe and that's it. If you happened to overpay your taxes, you'll get a refund. No exceptions. Technically there is one situation where someone who claimed zero wouldn't get a refund. The only situation I could think of is where the person had two jobs... one normal job and another job as a 1099 consultant. Taxes for people who work 1099 aren't taken out of your pay automatically. But pretty much if you claim zero, you'll over pay your taxes and the government will have to give you some of the money you paid into the system back BTW, I think this is a good situation to remind you that claiming zero is not a good financial idea. It's basically giving the government an interest free loan of your money and then getting it back later. Why not just claim the actual number so that you don't have to get a refund back and you get more money with each paycheck so YOU could benefit off the interest?|||Nope. I normally claim 0 allowances on my W-4 and even sometimes have additional tax withheld and still wind up with a tax debt at filing time. That's fine by me as I hate lending the government money interest-free. As long as I owe less than $1,000 or meet one of the other safe harbor exceptions, there are no penalties at filing time. I've used those safe harbor exceptions to pay as much as $30,000 when I filed and still avoided penalties. I have significant other income not subject to withholding so claiming 0 allowances will virtually always leave me with a tax debt. Two jobs can do it, but there are many other sources of taxable income that can and will cause that to happen, such as dividends, interest, capital gains, certain gambling winnings, certain pensions or retirement plan distributions, etc.