Last month, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Treasury department to defer Social Security Tax withholding for employees earning less than $4000 every two weeks beginning September 1, 2020 and continuing until the end of the year. Late Friday, the IRS issued guidance on this deferral.
IRS Notice 2020-65 is largely unclear but does tell us a couple key things. First, it tells us that the deferral is voluntary at the employer level. There is no requirement to defer the tax. It also calls for the repayment of the deferred tax during the first four months of 2021. The biggest thing is it decides who is responsible to repaying the deferral. And the responsible party is the employer. The notice defines the taxpayer as the employer and not the employee which means that any deferred tax money may have to be repaid by the employer even if the employee no longer works there and the employer is not able to recover the money from the employee. With this in mind, to save your company from having to pay back taxes for a terminated employee, we strongly recommend that you do not defer the employee’s Social Security Taxes for the rest of the year. When more IRS guidance is released we will update this as necessary.
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