Refund from tax minus amounts already paid
Estimate a 2026 federal refund or amount owed from published income tax, child credits and EITC, minus the withholding you already had taken out. Not a W-4 projection.
Your numbers
Revenue Procedure 2025-32us-tax-2026-v1 · withholding is the amount you enter, not Pub. 15-T
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Guide
The number on a refund is the difference between what was already paid and what the return actually owes. This page estimates that gap from 2026 published income tax, the child tax credit and the EITC, using the withholding you type rather than Publication 15-T tables that are not in the snapshot.
Employers withhold from Form W-4 and IRS percentage-method tables in Publication 15-T. Those tables have not been transcribed here, so inventing a withholding figure from filing status and a paycheck would be a guess dressed as a schedule.
Enter what was actually withheld — Form W-2 box 2 — and the page compares it with tax from the ordinary brackets, Schedule SE if you enter a profit, and the same credit engines as the dedicated pages.
Nonrefundable child tax credit reduces tax. The additional child tax credit and the earned income credit can be paid even when tax is already zero. Wages plus self-employment profit, minus the deductible half of Schedule SE tax, stand in for AGI and MAGI, which can still mis-time a phase-out if you have other adjustments the page does not ask for.
Itemised deductions, retirement contributions, education credits, state refunds, NIIT, and Additional Medicare Tax on W-2 wages all move the answer. Most of those omissions overstate tax; omitting W-2 Additional Medicare can understate it.
Publication 15-T percentage-method tables are not in the tax snapshot. Without those tables, a W-4 withholding estimate would not be an official-data figure.
Box 2 is what was actually withheld. That is the number a refund compares against.
Yes for a fixed tax. It also means less money in each paycheck. The return settles the difference; it does not change the year’s tax.
No. This page is federal income tax, federal withholding, Schedule SE, the child tax credit and the EITC only.
Results are for information. They are not legal, tax, medical, or financial advice. How the math is maintained · Report a wrong figure.
Rounding, versioning, and omissions that sit beside the guide rather than repeating it.
Calculation receipt
This answer is built from published figures. Each one is named below, with the release it came from.
If a source above is unavailable or out of date: A refund is withholding minus liability, and liability is the published schedules.
Sources