Oklahoma teachers express surprise over tax deductions from school year's signing bonus
The program's goal is to provide up to $50,000 to incentivize people into the classroom. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KOKH) — The State Superintendent's teacher signing bonuses hit educator's bank accounts this week.
The program's goal is to provide up to $50,000 to incentivize people into the classroom.
This only applies to teachers entering or returning to the industry after a gap.
The bonus is only for this school year, but if you commit to teach in Oklahoma for five years, you can receive between $15-50,000.
One teacher reached out to FOX25 though, saying they felt shortchanged when they got their first check.
"I didn't really have any plans to go back to teaching before I heard about this bonus program," a teacher who prefers to remain anonymous said.
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The teacher rejoined education strictly to quality for Walters' bonus program, a tiered system based on how many years of experience you have and where you decide to teach.
"Out of the $50K bonus I actually got $29K and some change, the other $21K was withheld for tax purposes," the teacher said.
That number is far below what the math teacher was expecting.
"I had done some napkin math trying to figure out approximately what will the withholdings be, and this was far outside even my most conservative estimate for how much they would take out," the teacher said.
Robin Walker, an accounting professor at Oklahoma City University is weighing-in.
"That would be subject to social security tax, FICA and Medicare, so that's going to be 7.65%. And then if you are in a state like Oklahoma that's 4.75%. And then federally there's a variety of rates and it depends on how the W-4 is filled out, but that can be between 22-30% or so," Walker said, adding that it's pretty typical to get around 40% taken out of a bonus by taxes withheld. "No that's not abnormal, and if they estimated too high on the federal and state income taxes, that will come back to you when you file your income tax."
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