HOW TO REDUCE YOUR WITHHOLDING AND INCREASE...

HOW TO REDUCE YOUR WITHHOLDING AND INCREASE YOUR TAKE-HOME PAY by Jack Warren Wade Jr. (Collier: $6.95). “If your income tax refund check was over $200 last year, you were overwithheld ,” Jack Warren Wade Jr. says in the preface to this meticulously written, step-by-step handbook for Americans who do not want more of their income withheld for tax purposes than they will actually owe. There are, of course, taxpayers who look on their annual refund check as a kind of involuntary savings account; but as savings accounts go, the zero-interest IRS “account” has little to recommend it. Many first-time house buyers are unaware that the tax refund that will be due them because of their hefty new mortgage interest payments can be, in effect, paid out to them in the course of the year if they will but increase the number of “allowances” on their W-2. When I was first in the house market, no real estate agent pointed this simple measure out to me. I learned of it almost by chance from a law student whose grasp of it left me with many unanswered questions. Wade answers my old questions and raises and answers interesting new ones. You do not have to be a homeowner to benefit from Wade’s advice, however. In this regard, indeed, his book is in a class by itself: a tax strategy book that does not exclude even wage-earning renters without a nickel to invest. A bonus chapter for those whose income fluctuates wildly from season to season should have special appeal north of Sunset and south of the Hollywood Freeway.