Here’s another tax tip from Ron Mueller, author of “It’s How Much You KEEP, That Counts!Not how much you Make.”

BEWARE OF INCREASE IN MINIMUM-WAGE

This is for you if you have hired your spouse (as discussed in Chapter 6) and are paying him/her minimum wage. The Federal Minimum Wage level has been increased from $5.15 per hour to $5.85 per hour (the first increase in a decade), but that’s just the “default setting.”

Each state sets its own minimum wage level, so make sure you are in compliance with the level in your state.

This is very important because the taxes you are withholding from your spouse’s wages is a percentage of the wage amount, so if your wages are too low, you could be nabbed for under-withholding payroll taxes.