2020 Sept Newsletter

Employee Social Security Tax Deferral FAQ

We are getting this question a lot from practice owners about the recent Trump Executive Order allowing employees to defer paying their Social Security taxes for the remainder of this year:

I wanted to know if we are obligated to withhold the payroll taxes for the employees.  I am not sure if this is mandatory. It was supposed to start September 1 of this year. Please advise what to do. 

And our response is:

No, there is no requirement that you help your employees defer this tax.  The whole thing is a lot of extra work to defer $1k or so of social security taxes into 2021. If an employee really needs this extra money right now, they should take advantage of this opportunity. Otherwise let’s stay the course.

A copy of our article originally posted on 8/31 is available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trumps-executive-order-allowing-your-employees-defer-social-schwartz/.

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