What does federal tax's mean?

Answer 1

Employees that receive a W2 from their employers usually fill out the Federal form W4 which determines the amount of federal tax taken out of each paycheck. The purpose of the form is to prevent underpayment or large overpayment of federal tax. As an alternative you can "block" federal taxes from being taken-which means having $0 per paycheck applied to federal taxes. This should only be done if you don't expect to pay federal taxes or your taxes are paid in another way (for instance through a spouse's withholding.

This might also be done if the amount of tax that needs to be paid for the year is known at the start. A person could block the tax and then specify a flat amount taken out each paycheck. For instance if you pay $12000 a year in taxes and get paid once a month you could have a flat tax of $1000/month taken out. The advantage to this method is that rather than getting a refund at the end of the year you have use of the money through out the year.