IRS Loosens Tax Penalty for Millions, But to get your money back if you’ve filed already, you’ll have to send in a new paper form
The IRS said Friday that because of changes and confusion caused by the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it will penalize fewer taxpayers who didn’t withhold enough federal taxes in 2018.
Before the ruling, taxpayers who had arranged to have their employers withhold just 85 percent of what they really owed would have been subject to an underpayment penalty. Now the threshold drops to 80 percent, the IRS says. In more typical tax years, most taxpayers must pay at least 90 percent of their federal taxes for a given year, or 100 percent of what they owed the year before, to avoid an underpayment penalty.