The Internal Revenue Service released information on how employees now have until the end of the year to repay any payroll taxes they deferred from last year.
Former President Trump issued a presidential memorandum last August allowing Social Security taxes to be deferred for the rest of 2020, but under the order they had to be repaid by April 30, 2021. The coronavirus relief package that Congress passed last month extended the repayment period until the end of this year.
Relatively few companies actually implemented the payroll deferral for their employees because there was no guarantee that the deferred payroll taxes would ultimately be forgiven by Congress. However, federal employees and military service members were still required to accept the payroll tax deferral, meaning those taxpayers will be facing smaller paychecks later this year.
Matt Waters, CPA, MBA, CGMA, has more than 15 years of experience managing accounting and finance. He has worked with both small organizations and large public companies including The Home Depot and American Tower. His expertise includes process improvements and software evaluation for the FASB’s new lease accounting guidance issued in February 2016.
While at Home Depot, he led the project to consolidate data for real estate, equipment and other leased assets into a single department, which increased efficiency for the preparation of financial reports, 10K footnotes, budgets and forecasts. Organizing lease data allowed the business to see patterns, eliminate waste, and make more informed decisions. Ultimately, his project enabled company-wide quality control over leased assets that reduced over-payments and other costs, which added money back to the bottom line.
Waters became a Certified Public Accountant in February 2004 and a Chartered Global Management Accountant in July 2012. He received his MBA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Matthew Attwell is Risk & Client Services Director at The ai Corporation.
In Notice 2021-11, the IRS on Tuesday explained how employers who deferred payroll taxes on behalf of their employees can withhold and pay the deferred taxes throughout 2021 instead of just within the first four months of the year.
The deferral applied to employees who were paid less than $4,000 every two weeks, or an equivalent amount for other pay periods, with each pay period considered separately. The taxes, which are technically called Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance, or OASDI, are calculated at 6.2 percent of employees’ wages.
Notice 2021-11 makes changes to last year’s Notice 2020-65 to reflect the extended payment period. Payments made by Jan. 3, 2022, will be considered to be timely because Dec. 31, 2021, is a legal holiday. However, any penalties, interest and additions to tax will now start to apply on Jan. 1, 2022, for any unpaid balances
The IRS cautioned that employees could see their deferred taxes being collected immediately, so employees should check with their organization’s payroll point of contact on what their collection schedule will be.
