Hi,
welcome back!
The purpose of W4 form - to determine your income tax withholding.
Assuming you are single, do not have any dependents, and will use standard deduction - you normally should claim two allowances on W4 form.
If you are going to claim any additional deductions - you should add one allowance for each $3650 of additional deduction (for 2009).
I will estimate your withholding if needed.
The form W-5 is used in you have a dependent for whom you are eligible for EIC and want top claim Advance Earned Income Credit with your paycheck.
As you are an employee - you need to confirm with your employer if you will be treated as a statutory employee.
The difference is in claiming your job related expenses.
If you are an employee, you may be able to deduct your work-related expenses as an itemized deduction (subject to limitations) on Form 1040, Schedule A. Additional information on this subject can be found in the instructions for the Form 1040, Schedule.
If you have an office in your home that you use as your principal place of business for your employer, you may deduct the cost of traveling between your home office and work places associated with your employment.
To deduct expenses for business use of the home, part of your home must be used regularly and exclusively as one of the following:
Where the exclusive use requirement applies, you cannot deduct business expenses for any part of your home that you use for both personal and business purposes. For example, if you are an attorney and use the den of your home to write legal briefs and also for personal purposes, you may not deduct any business-use-of-your-home expenses. Further, under the principal-place-of-business test, you must determine that your home is the principal place of your trade or business after considering where your most important activities are performed and most of your time is spent, in order to deduct expenses for the business use of your home.
Deductions also may be taken for regular use of a residence for the provision of day care services or for business storage purposes; exclusive use is not required in these cases. You also may take deductions if you rent out your residence. For more information, see Publication 587
Let me know if you need any help.
The issue is if you are paid for your training.
If you are not paid - your transportation expenses will be in connection with job related education and might be deductible as such.
If you are paid - that would be commuting travel, however - if you have a permanent work place that is different from the training office - your training office might be considered as temporary place of employment - in this case your travel expenses will be deductible.
Please provide these options to your tax person for considerations.
Tax Preparer
Taxes, Immigration, Labor Relations