How to Fill Out California DE 4: Allowances, Exempt, and Filing

To fill out California Form DE 4, pick a filing status, run through Worksheet A to count your withholding allowances, complete the optional Worksheet B if you itemize or have significant non-wage income, then write your allowance totals (and any extra dollar amount you want withheld) onto the certificate section and give the signed form to your employer. The DE 4 is California’s own withholding certificate, filed through the Employment Development Department, and it controls how much state income tax comes out of each paycheck.¹ Federal withholding runs on IRS Form W-4 and is a separate document.

What to Gather Before You Start

The DE 4 is a downloadable PDF on the EDD website.² Before you open it, pull together:

Your full legal name, Social Security number, and current home address.
Your most recent California Form 540, which makes it much easier to estimate deductions and income adjustments.
Approximate annual wages from every job, plus any non-wage income such as interest, dividends, or rental earnings.
Projected totals for mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions, and any other itemized deductions.

What you write on the DE 4 should line up with what you eventually report on your state return. Mismatches cause withholding errors that can leave you with a balance due, or even a penalty, at filing time.

Pick Your Filing Status

The first choice on the certificate is your filing status. It determines the tax rate schedule your employer uses. The DE 4 offers three:

Single or Married (with two or more incomes) — if you are unmarried, or married but both spouses earn wages.
Married (one income) — if you are married and only one spouse works.
Head of Household — if you are unmarried and pay more than half the cost of maintaining a home for a qualifying dependent for more than half the year.

If you are in a registered domestic partnership, California treats you the same as a married spouse for state withholding purposes.² That treatment does not extend to your federal W-4.

Work Through Worksheet A

Worksheet A turns your personal and family situation into a count of regular withholding allowances. Each allowance lowers the tax withheld from your paycheck. Go line by line:

Line A — Yourself: enter 1.
Line B — Spouse: enter 1 if your spouse does not separately claim an allowance on their own DE 4.
Lines C and D — Blindness: enter 1 for yourself and/or 1 for your spouse if either of you is legally blind.
Line E — Dependents: enter the number of dependents you will claim on your return, not counting yourself or your spouse.
Line F — Total: add Lines A through E.

The number on Line F is your count of regular allowances. It goes on Line 1a of the certificate.²

Handle Worksheet B If You Itemize or Have Non-Wage Income

Worksheet B is optional. Use it only if you plan to itemize deductions on your California return, claim certain adjustments to income, or have meaningful non-wage income. It converts expected deductions into additional allowances so less tax is withheld from each check.

Line 1: your estimated California itemized deductions for the year (mortgage interest, charitable gifts, state taxes paid, and so on).
Line 2: the standard deduction for your filing status — $11,412 if you are married filing jointly, head of household, or a qualifying surviving spouse; $5,706 if you are single or married filing separately.²
Line 3: Line 1 minus Line 2.
Line 4: estimated adjustments to income, such as deductible IRA contributions or alimony.
Line 5: add Lines 3 and 4.
Line 6: estimated non-wage income (interest, dividends, rental income).
Lines 7–8: if Line 5 is larger than Line 6, subtract Line 6 from Line 5, divide by $1,000, round to the nearest whole number, and enter the result on Line 1b of the certificate.
Lines 9–11: if Line 6 is larger than Line 5, your non-wage income exceeds your extra deductions, and you move to Worksheet C to calculate an additional dollar amount of withholding instead of extra allowances.

Each $1,000 of net excess deductions becomes one additional allowance.² Your prior-year 540 is the best starting point for the estimates.

Fill In the Certificate

Once the worksheets are done, the certificate itself is short:

Line 1a: regular allowances from Worksheet A.
Line 1b: additional allowances from Worksheet B, if any.
Line 1c: the total of 1a and 1b. This is the number your employer plugs into the withholding calculation.
Line 2: a flat dollar amount you want withheld from each paycheck on top of the allowance calculation. Your employer must agree to this additional withholding.²

More allowances mean less tax withheld; fewer allowances mean more withheld. Line 2 is useful if you have income no one is withholding on — freelance work, capital gains, rental income — and you would rather cover the tax through payroll than send in estimated payments.

If You Have a Second Job or a Working Spouse

Splitting allowances evenly across two DE 4s is the most common way to end up under-withheld. Each employer sees only its own paycheck and withholds at a lower rate than your combined household income actually requires. A safer approach is to claim all of your allowances on the DE 4 for your highest-paying job and enter zero on any others.

Claiming Exempt Status

You can skip withholding entirely only if you meet both of these conditions:

You owed no federal or state income tax last year.
You do not expect to owe any federal or state income tax this year.

Exempt status does not roll over. To keep it in place for the next year, you have to submit a new DE 4 designating exempt by February 15. And if you currently have no tax withheld but expect to owe next year, you have to give your employer a new DE 4 by December 1.² Miss the deadline and your employer reverts to default withholding.

What Happens If You Never File One

Start a new job without a DE 4 and your employer must withhold as if you are single with zero allowances. That is the most aggressive setting on the form and takes the largest possible amount out of each check. You get the excess back as a refund, but only after you file. A completed DE 4 replaces that worst-case default with numbers that reflect your actual situation.

Where to Send It and When to Update It

Give the signed DE 4 to your employer’s payroll or HR department. You do not send it to the EDD or the Franchise Tax Board. Many employers accept it through an electronic payroll portal; some still want a signed paper copy. New withholding usually shows up within one or two pay cycles, so check the state tax line on your next pay stub. Keep a copy for yourself.

File a new DE 4 whenever something changes that affects your tax picture: starting or losing a second job, marriage or divorce, a new child, buying a home, or a meaningful swing in non-wage income. There is no cap on how often you can update it.

Getting the Numbers Right

Claiming too many allowances, or claiming exempt when you don’t qualify, can leave you owing at tax time. California charges an estimate penalty rate of 4% on underpaid amounts, and interest on any balance due accrues at 7% for the period from July 2025 through June 2026.³ To stay in the safe harbor, your total payments during the year (withholding plus any estimated payments) generally must equal the lesser of:

90% of your current-year California tax liability, or
100% of your prior-year tax liability (110% if your prior-year California adjusted gross income exceeded $150,000, or $75,000 if married filing separately).⁴

Filing a DE 4 with false information to reduce withholding below what is properly owed carries a $500 civil penalty, and willfully supplying fraudulent information can trigger criminal penalties.² Aim for allowances that reflect your real situation and update the form when that situation changes.

1
Franchise Tax Board. Adjust Your Wage Withholding
2
EDD – CA.gov. Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate (DE 4)
3
Franchise Tax Board. Interest and Estimate Penalty Rates
4
Franchise Tax Board. Estimated Tax Payments