IRS issues guidance on repayment of deferred payroll taxes

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.

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.

CORONAVIRUS IMPACT: ADDITIONAL COVERAGE

Troy Vosseller is the Co-Founder of gener8tor–a Midwest-based venture capital firm and startup accelerator network. Since 2012, gener8tor has worked with more than 1,000 startups that have cumulatively raised more than $1.4B in follow-on venture capital. Troy came to gener8tor from the University of Wisconsin Law School's Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic, a program providing free legal services to startup businesses and entrepreneurs, where he worked as an Assistant Clinical Professor/Supervising Attorney. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Troy founded the most cliché student startup imaginable–a t-shirt company. It was a success, and today Sconnie Nation continues to market a line of apparel that focuses on celebrating the Wisconsin lifestyle.
Before discovering his love of startups, Troy held brief stints at Qualcomm and Intuit. He holds a BA, MBA and JD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alex Fuentes has 20 years of experience in start-up and rapid-change environments and is currently Brickeye's Executive Vice President of Strategic Growth and Business Development.

He provides a deep understanding of infrastructure development and cleantech to Brickeye, having served in senior roles within the energy storage and renewable energy sectors. Alex holds an MBA from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Lena is a startup veteran with demonstrated expertise in propelling business growth for growth-stage fintech companies. In her role as Chief Revenue Officer at leading life insurance technology company Bestow, Lena Chukhno oversees B2B partnership growth for advisor, embedded and enterprise partners. Companies of every size — from startups to public companies — leverage Bestow's software to launch and sell digital life insurance and improve efficiency and profitability by managing the business online.

Prior to joining Bestow, Lena had a combined role as the General Manager of Student Loan Refinancing and Head of Strategy at Earnest, a mission-driven fintech in San Francisco. Under her leadership, Earnest grew to become the market leader in the education financing space.

Previously, she led business development and growth strategy for the Multi-Asset Solutions division at JPMorgan and spent time at McKinsey & Company in management consulting.

A native of Ukraine, Lena earned bachelor's and master's degrees in finance from Kyiv National Economic University, and an MBA from INSEAD.

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

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IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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.