2018 Federal Deposit Requirements Changing

[kayelynne]

We have received a letter from the IRS that they are changing our 2018 federal deposit requirements for form 941 from monthly to semi-weekly. Our payday is on Friday and it says that our accumulated deposits for taxes accumulated will be due the following Wednesday. I know I must change it in the Tax Reports/941 form
section and choose Semi-weekly depositor when I print the form, but where else to I change this so that I can print a employer payroll report that will tell me semi weekly what to pay? Thanks!

[Paul Mayer]

What is the easiest is what we did when they changed us to semi-weekly, we simply paid the taxes each pay date. Using the Employers Totals report, we pay the "Period" numbers.

[PeteBrightbill]

This also happened to us beginning in 2018. I am a bit confused what the Period column precisely means. It frequently shows as all zeros for me. Is that because I generate the report with a different date after payroll? Finally, this column may not help because I frequently do payroll over 2-3 days. What I would like is to be able to define the Period column as a range of dates.

[Paul Mayer]

Period is the Pay Date. PayWindow is date sensitive and you can use the Transactions list if you cannot remember a pay date and the set the date in PayWindow to the date that you want to print a report for and then it will not be zeros.

You said you to payroll every two or three days which is crazy as you really need to print and save printed reports for 3 years in case of any future audits. Best practice is to pick a standard payroll cycle and stick to it.

[PeteBrightbill]

I believe there is a misunderstanding. I do payroll biweekly. However, there are multiple stores with employees that dont all get their act together quickly...I wait to get store managers validation that time clock is correct. For example, I may start doing payroll for a 2 week period on a Saturday, but not finish until Monday. This happens frequently.
I realize that the "Period" column must correspond to an exact date and this is not flexible.
What would work better for me is being able to set the Period to a range of dates ....(Saturday thru Monday in my example) so that it reveals the correct Federal Deposit amount I owe for this pay period.
As it stands now, I either have to add multiple "Period" columns myself or what I do...is Subtract the previous payperiod from the monthly totals.

[Paul Mayer]

Sorry, I didn't see you last post until today while doing maintenance in the forums.

Tax Payments are made by Monthly or Semi-Weekly Depositor. I'd in the Semi-Weekly Status and since I pay on-line, I just pay after each payroll. With your screwy schedule if you are a Semi-Weekly depositor, I'd suggest the same and just pay after each payroll.

[PeteBrightbill]

For clarity sake, Bi-weekly means every 2 weeks. Semi-weekly means twice a week. I dont think anybody is semi-weekly. ;-)
Sounds like both you and myself are bi-weekly (every 2 weeks). However, you have the benefit of always doing your payroll processing in a single day.....where I frequently do my bi-weekly payroll on multiple calendar days.....Lets say Store A on Saturday and Store B on Monday. I didnt realize I was unique in this. Thanks for the response.

[Paul Mayer]

Believe it our not, the IRS has a status called semiweekly payers:


Schedule B (Form 941):
Report of Tax Liability for Semiweekly Schedule Depositors

How about that? LOL