The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act, makes employers who hire certain previously unemployed workers exempt from some employer payroll taxes. Detail are available at this page on the IRS web site www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=220745,00.html If you subscribe to Peachtree’s payroll tax update service, form W-11 has been added to your tax forms and the 941 has been updated. But on the 941 there are HIRE related fields that you will have to supply information for.
Line 6c of the 941 is used to report qualified HIRE wages in the 2nd quarter. A good report for finding this information is the Tax Liability Report. But you will need to filter the report to get the wages for just the employee(s) that you need. If you only have 1 qualifying employee, then the simplest method is to just click the Options button, filter by Employee ID, and check the box next to that employee’s ID. I also recommend checking the “Summarize Report” box to make it easier to find the information you will need. If you have multiple qualifying employees, and you are not using the Type field in Maintain Employees for anything else, then you can enter HIRE in the Type field of each qualifying employee. Then, when setting the options for the Tax Liability Report, filter by Employee Type, and put HIRE in the From and To fields. If you are already using the Type field, then filter the report by Employee ID and check each qualifying employee in the “one or more” filter section. With any of these methods, you may find it helpful to save this report for use next quarter.
Make sure that your date range is set for the entire 2nd quarter, then use the Taxable Gross amount from the Social Security Wages line (and Social Security Tips if any) as the amount for line 6c.
Line 12d wants only the wages paid to qualified employees from 3/19/2010 (the date HIRE took effect) through 3/31/2010. So return to the Tax Liability report that you have previously filtered, click the Options button and set the date range from 3/19/2010 to 3/31/2010. Again, use the Social Security taxable gross amount.
Don’t forget to reduce your tax liability by 6.2% of the qualified employee’s wages. If you are a monthly depositor you will do that on line 17. If you are a semi-weekly depositor, you will do that on Schedule B. 6.2% represents the employer social security tax, and should be equal to the amount in 6d, or half of the Social Security Tax Liability amount on the filtered Tax Liability report.
