Taxes and Reports Due Tomorrow
W2, W3, 941
My reporting requirements are pretty low these days. I do still have one company that has employees. Tomorrow I will mail in our 941 for the fourth quarter of 2024 and a check for taxes. For those of you who don’t know, that is the form that tells the IRS how much money was withheld from your pay and your employer doubles the FICA and Medicare amounts.
I will also file W2 and W3 online. If you have been an employee, you know what a W2 is. The W3 accompanies the W2s and summarizes everything for the IRS.
You really don’t know what it is like to be an employer until your payment to the IRS for your employee obligations (withholding, FICA and Medicare) is more than the amount you take home to pay your rent and feed your family. Even though the withholding came from the employee and half the FICA and Medicare came from the employee, it feels like it comes out of your pocket when you make the payment. I remember that day well. It made me wonder, what the hell am I doing?
A successful employer must get over it. I know one man who said his payroll was $250,000 every two weeks. The employer portion of FICA and Medicare combined are 7.65%. He was paying $19,125 every two weeks for his employees to have social security and Medicare in their retirement. When I met him, he had sold his business and lost his money on another business.
That gives you a glimpse of what goes through my mind when people complain about billionaires not doing enough to help people with their money. They are paying half of their employees’ retirement and medical expenses. How much is enough?
I hope we can get a private economy growing so that there is a shortage of workers. That puts pressure to pay more which results in more growth. Yes, it is inflationary. Perhaps, supply can keep up.