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.
Charles E. Davis, PhD, CPA, CMA, CGMA, is a Professor of Accounting at Baylor University. He has published numerous academic and practitioner articles, as well as a managerial accounting textbook now in its 4thedition. He currently serves on the Strategic Finance Editorial Review Board and is a past member of the AICPA’s Accounting Education Executive Committee and Precertification Education Executive Committee. Timothy Lindquist, PhD, is the PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor of Accounting at the University of Northern Iowa. Having previously served on the editorial board of Issues in Accounting Education, he has published numerous research articles in a mix of high-level academic journals and high-impact practitioner journals. His experience in higher education spans nearly 40 years. Joseph Ugrin PhD, CPA, is the Deloitte Professor of Accounting and head of the Department of Accounting at the University of Northern Iowa. He has published nearly two dozen research articles and serves as the associate editor for Advances in Accounting and on the editorial boards for the Journal of Information Systems and the Accounting Educators Journal. He is a CPA and the past chair of the AICPA’s Precertification Education Executive Committee.
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.
