Assuming that your gross income is after deduction of the medical, dental, and vision insurance and the 401(k) contributions, your taxable income is about $11,402.39. You don’t have enough itemized deductions to make it worth itemizing so I’ve used the standard deduction. Life insurance and commuting costs are not deductible so they don’t factor into the calculations. Your tax on that taxable income comes to $1,319.10 so you would receive a refund of $929.83. That’s Federal only; I don’t have the NYS numbers handy.

Your best bet would be to adjust your withholding allowances to 1 or even 2. Your refund is too large; you’re giving the government free use of about $20 per week interest-free that would otherwise be in your paycheck. Doing that will shrink your future refunds but you’ll make up for it with larger paychecks throughout the year.

If the child lives with you, you can most likely claim him or her as a dependent. If the child does NOT live with you, you most likely can’t. Since you mention paying child support, I assume that the child does NOT live with you.

You don’t have enough itemized expenses to itemize, so you’ll be taking the standard deduction. By the way, child support, fuel to and from work, and life insurance payments are not deductible.

The 401K contribution of 1215.55 comes off your taxable income (assuming it hasn’t already been subtracted from the number you give for gross – check, since it might have been, and that will make a difference of up to around $1800 in what I’m calculating for your refund). So that would take your income from $20,152.39 down to $18,936.84 – that will be further reduced by $5350 for your standard deduction and $3400 for your exemption, so you’d be taxed on $10,187. Tax on that would be $1149, so you’d get a refund of around $1100. That will change a little due to your paychecks for the additional time this year.

If the custodial parent gives you permission in writing to claim the child, and states that she won’t claim the child, then you could – with the exemption and the child tax credit, your tax would be pretty close to wiped out so you’d get back all or most of what you paid in for federal income tax. The custodial parent is entitled to claim the child unless they give the other parent permission, in writing, to claim the child – this is the case no matter how much child support you pay. Even if you could claim the child, you wouldn’t be able to file as head of household unless the child lived with you for over 6 months this year.

You need to clarify your filing status.