Should I increase my tax holdings?

[Klesko]

I am planning on filing in september when my income has dropped enough to qualify for BK7. It will be close if I am under the median income or not but if I am not I should pass the means test being about negative $400ish according to my calculations. This is of course as long as my tax refund(7k total) doesn't count as income and can be exempt which my lawyer said he can get it.

Anyway right now my withholding's are very low because I always have alot of deductions and was wondering if I should increase those holdings just in case I have to do the means test. The increase taxes will help but I wonder two things.

- It wont take effect under June, so I would only get June, July, August benefit.
- Will the trustee look at this bad and will this trigger anything negative.

Right now they are only taking out about 20% on my checks and I could prob increase it to where about 27% is taken out.

[JRScott]

Probably wouldn't help you. All increasing your tax deductions would do is increase your tax refund next year which means ultimately the trustee would still get it, so I just wouldn't do anything in that area.

Since you don't plan to file until Sept that means 2/3rds of the year would have passed meaning that possibly up to that amount of the tax refund would be up for grabs though if your lawyer can exempt it then you could save it. Before I considered it I'd ask the lawyer how much of the tax refund could he exempt, get an upper limit and work from there.

[Klesko]

Well I should get less in a refund next year then I did this year. I think the wild card exemption for my state is 10k and I am not using that for other things.

I will keep it as it is for now I guess.