Add Federal Tax Info for US Employees

Payroll Administrator Guide
Version
R2025.2.1
ft:lastEdition
2025-12-01
Add Federal Tax Info for US Employees

When you add an entry in the Federal Tax Info section of a regular US employee's HR profile, you are entering W-4 information for the employee.

If the employment type for the employee is pensioner, the form type is W-4P or W-4R, depending on whether the pensioner is receiving periodic or non-periodic payments, respectively.

When you add a new record to the Federal Tax info section, Dayforce automatically adds an end-date the Effective To field of the existing (old) record one day earlier than the new Effective Date. For example, if you add a record with an Effective From date of 8/16/2020, Dayforce adds 8/15/2020 to the Effective To date of the old record.

To add W-4, W-4P, or W-4R information for an employee:

  1. Go to People, open the employee profile, and click Payroll > Tax Definitions.
  2. In the Federal Tax Info section, click Add.
  3. In the Effective From field, enter the date that tax definition takes effect.
  4. (Optional) In the Effective To field, enter the date that the tax definition expires. The default date is one year after the Effective From date.
  5. Select the Exempt Tax Only, Update Wages checkbox to apply the exemption to the tax, but track the taxable wages for information purposes.
  6. In the Filing Status drop-down list, select one of the following:
    • 1 - Single or Married filing separately: The employee is single or married and is filing a single tax return. This includes people who are legally separated or divorced.
    • 2 - Married filing jointly: The employee is married and is filing a tax return jointly with their spouse.
    • 6 - Head of Household. The employee is unmarried and pays more than half of the costs of keeping up a home.
  7. Select the Lock In checkbox to lock the configuration so that the employee can't make any further changes by independently submitting a W-4 form. If the employee attempts to submit an updated form, they're shown a warning that tells them that their witholding information is currently locked and can't be changed.
  8. (Optional) Enter any additional amounts that will be withheld from the employee’s salary in the following fields, as applicable:
    • 3 - Dependent Tax Credit
    • 4a - Other Income
    • 4b - Deductions
    • 4c - Extra Withholding
    • 2biii - Total W-2 Income & Addl Pension
  9. Click Save.