AMS and the 2020 federal withholding tax changes

IMPORTANT NOTE: AMS is incapable supporting the federal withholding tax changes announced for 2020. The W-4 form, completed by the employee to define their marital status and dependents, has been changed to include multiple conditions that can't be expressed within the AMS federal tax setup. Additionally, states are beginning to make changes similar to the federal form/calculation, and the hard-coded AMS state tax calculations have been outdated for more than fifteen years.

Existing employees are not (currently) required to fill out the new Federal W-4 form. If they do not, the 2019 tax tables are suitable for use on those employees in 2020 (click the 2019 link at the bottom of this page to see those values).

However, any NEW employees hired after January 1, 2020 are required to fill out the new W-4 form, and AMS simply cannot handle the variations in tax calculation for those employees. If you insist on continuing to use AMS for 2020 and beyond, the most accurate withholding taxes can be determined using the manual lookup tables supplied by the federal and state governments. Federal tables can be found in IRS Publication 15 (15T as of December 24, 2019). State tables can be found in their employer withholding tax guide (such as the NC-30 for North Carolina).

For more information on 2020 federal form W-4, click here.

Archived AMS Payroll Tax Changes