On Saturday, President Trump signed an Executive order regarding a deferral for employee and employer Social Security tax. While these are not yet actionable as we are awaiting further guidance from the Treasury Department, we are committed to bringing you the most up to date information. We will continue to monitor legislation.
Here is what we know today:
- Signed August 8th.
- The deferral is effective September 1, 2020, through December 31, 2020. Employee’s earning less than $100,000.00 per year, or just under $4,000.00 per biweekly paycheck, will be eligible to defer the tax.
- Currently the withholding is a deferral, therefore future payback obligations may/will be necessary. As currently written the tax would then be due at a time to be determined, in 2021.
- The deferral of deposit and payments is in addition to the employer portion deferral opportunity released as part of the CARES Act. While the CARES Act, signed into law April 2020, allows employers to defer their share of Social Security tax through the remainder of 2020, this new deferral is for both employee and employer share of the Social Security tax.
As always, we will continue to share actions as they become available.