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.

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Josh Quint is the director of cloud solutions at ServerCentral Turing Group. SCTG offers cloud-native software development, AWS consulting, cloud infrastructure and global data center services.

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Gautam Khanna joined Insight's Fixed Income Group as a senior portfolio manager in 2003 (via predecessor company Cutwater Asset Management). He leads the management of Insight's flagship U.S. core, core plus and high yield strategies. Prior to Cutwater, Khanna was a member of the high-yield team at Times Square Capital Management, where he focused on credit management for CBOs as well as high-yield total return accounts. he is a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts. He holds a BS (Hons) from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an MBA degree (with distinction) from Cornell University. He is also a CFA charterholder and is a CPA.

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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.
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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.