Layman explanation of Withholding Allowance tax form

Question

Hopefully this doesn't violate any rules, but I was hoping someone could explain this Withholding Allowance form to me in layman terms: https://dch.georgia.gov/sites/dch.georgia.gov/files/Employees_Withholding_Allowance_Certificate_G4_1.pdf

I generally get what it's trying to accomplish: the employer will automatically take money from your pay to go to your taxes, so hopefully you will not owe money on tax day. Putting the right information helps hit the mark on how much is withheld from your pay. Some of the fields are confusing to me because I don't understand the terminology. Tax terminology is definitely one of my weak subjects. I tried doing some googling but even the explanations are confusing to me, often sounding lawerish or robotic or just uses more terms I don't understand.

Could someone describe the following, maybe giving a simple scenario on when or why you would use the field, and how you would even know that you need to use it?

Additional Allowances

Additional Withholding

Federal Estimated Itemized Deductions

Standard Deduction

Allowable Deductions to Federal Adjusted Gross Income

Estimate of Taxable Income not Subject to Withholding

The entire section 8 (Exempt)

Answer 1

The section "Worksheet for calculating traditional allowances" is for people who will not be taking the standard deduction. In other words they will be itemizing on their federal form.

• If you know you are almost certain to be itemizing in 2018 then use the "Worksheet for calculating traditional allowances"
• if you are almost certain not be be itemizing then don't use that worksheet.
• If you are not sure what is involved in itemizing then don't worry about the worksheet.

Putting a zero in line 5 may mean that too much is withheld, but don't worry you will get it back in April 2019.

Section 8 exempt is for those people who know they will make so little money this year that they will not have to pay income tax, everything withheld will be refunded. A key provision is that you also made so little money last year that you didn't have to pay any taxes.

Since you will get everything withheld back there is no reason to go to the effort of withholding anything.