W-4 and State withholdings

[FiguringItOut]

I'm trying to adjust my tax withholdings for the year 2017, but my HR person is making my life very difficult and refuses to accept my forms.

I put 13 allowances on W-2 form and 10 allowances (max allowed) on my NY State form.  He claims that I am calculating this wrong and basically refuses to change anything.

So I did the worksheets for both forms.  On W-4 worksheet on line 4 is asks to .

enter estimate of your 2017 adjustments to income and any additional standard deductions

So for me it will be around $36,000  (401K + family HSA + tIRA + Transit + Medical).
Using $36K in line 4 divided by $4,050 per instructions plus 4 personal allowances I come up with 13 total allowances.
Am I doing this correct?

For state, it's the same thing, they asking

enter an estimate of your federal adjustments to income, such as alimony you will pay for the tax year and deductible IRA contributions you will make for the tax year

So that's the same $36K.  But now for State they say to divide this number by $1,000, so it comes to 36.  Plus 3 more personal allowances and I have a total of 39.  NYS allows 10 allowances max.  So I put 10 on the form.

So now, I don't know what to do to convince my HR that I filled these forms correctly.  Unless I didn't and the $36K adjustments to income I calculated is not correct. 

Should I not included all these items into the calculation? 401K + family HSA + tIRA + Transit + Medical


ETA:  I just looked through Publication 505 "Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax" and there is no mention of 401K deduction being included in the adjustments calculation.  Should I take that $18K out of the calc? 

[terran]

enter estimate of your 2017 adjustments to income and any additional standard deductions

So for me it will be around $36,000  (401K + family HSA + tIRA + Transit + Medical).

I think the issue you're having is that most of those deductions are already figured in to the calculations by your employer. You should only be including deductions that you would include on your tax returns, like the tIRA,  not deductions your employer already includes when calculations your W2.

[FiguringItOut]

enter estimate of your 2017 adjustments to income and any additional standard deductions

So for me it will be around $36,000  (401K + family HSA + tIRA + Transit + Medical).

I think the issue you're having is that most of those deductions are already figured in to the calculations by your employer. You should only be including deductions that you would include on your tax returns, like the tIRA,  not deductions your employer already includes when calculations your W2.

Hm...
So that means I should take out 401K and Transit out of the calculation.
HSA and IRA are my own contributions.  Employer does not offer HSA account.

Doing this reduced my federal allowances from 13 to 8.  State is reduced from 36 to 16, which is still lets me to max it at 10 on the form.

I suppose this makes sense.  I've also been reading the IRS publication so I think you are right.