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.
As vice president of new product development, Yumi Clark manages a 50-person team committed to building new technologies and digital experiences that fuel America’s 28.8 million small businesses. She also serves as Capital One’s Bay Area site leader (overseeing approximately 650 associates spanning small business and technology) and heads up the San Francisco Women’s Network. Throughout her career in product management, Yumi has honed her specialty in creating new businesses and scaling ideas for large corporations. Using lean start-up approaches, Yumi has evangelized test-and-learn and fail fast methodologies to build successful technology ventures for Silicon Valley corporations including Adobe, Intuit, eBay and PayPal. In addition to her professional achievements, Yumi has a passion for education and sits on the board of InPlay, an afterschool and summer activities site for low-income children; the San Francisco Children’s Creativity Museum; and 500 Start-ups, which supports early stage start-ups through mentoring.
Patrick Beaudan is CEO of Emotomy, an investment platform and robo solution based in Tiburon, California, and CEO of Belvedere Advisors.
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.
