u/AtuXIII

The year is 2067. You’re in the hospital, in a near-comatose state, dying of an illness. Basically, you can dream or exist in a virtual reality, but you can’t exist in the normal, conscious world.

In this future, doctors put people in your situation into any virtual reality of their choosing to live out the remainder of their lives in any way they wish. (They’re able to enter your mind to get information from you about how to engineer your reality.)

What would yours be like?

My job was recently terminated and I had to cash out my 401k as a result because a recent financial emergency left me with no savings. I opted for a full, lump sum distribution.

While filling out the distribution form, I did not fill out Form W-4R because it said that the defaults (20% federal, 2% for California) would be used if it was left blank. Upon receiving the check, however, I can see that 33.05% was withheld for the federal withholding, and about 3.3% for the state withholding.

This leaves me $4,000 shorter than I expected, which could be a serious issue for me depending on how long it takes me to find work.

Before I write to my employer about this: Is there some reason that these numbers make sense? Are they allowed to withhold more than the minimums in this case? Can my employer even reissue the check with the lower withholdings, or is there nothing I can do?

For what it's worth, my name is also misspelled on the check (there are three common ways to spell my name, they picked one that is one letter off), and I'm not sure if that necessitates reissuing the check anyway -- I've never tried to deposit a check with a misspelled name on it.

Also, I am under whatever age it is these days for a distribution without a penalty, although my understanding is that I'm responsible for that penalty during tax time, rather than them being able to withhold it.