I knew it would happen eventually. I received notice from the IRS this week about not filing payroll taxes for 2007 (I wasn’t using Paycycle then). Nothing crazy yet, but I need to get on the ball with finishing my business taxes for 2007 so I can at least know where I stand here. It will be at least a month or two before they start sending an estimated bill, so I have some time.
I’ve been sleeping terribly lately. I don’t know if it’s my crappy $30 used craiglist mattress, or the noises outside my door, or what. I just can’t seem to get a decent night’s sleep lately. All my life, I’ve never had trouble sleeping until all this mess. Maybe it just is the mattress…I don’t know.
I saw the full lunar eclipse tonite, that was pretty sweet. I’m a bit of a nerd for that kind of stuff (thanks Dad). It was nice to look up into the sky and realize…holy crap. That’s the freaking earth’s shadow! It made me and my problems feel very, very small. And it was exactly what I needed.
I’m going to make it through this mess I’ve made. It may take ages, but I’m going to make it.
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The IRS are the last people in the world that I want to owe anything to. I just recently did a balance transfer of all our IRS debt to a 0% credit card, and although I still owe the money we felt a great sense of relief after the transfer. If only because, we didn’t owe it to the KGB anymore.
Good Luck
Not to scare you or anything
but when I ‘forgot’ to file one year’s personal taxes, (I would have gotten back $53 that year), they came after me 6 years later.
They held up $5000 worth of tax return money until I cleared up everything, almost 5 months later. Happy ending,.. I was paid $122 interest on the money they withheld.
The IRS is SCARY.
Hang on a minute,
I know that as a self-employed person, I have to pay quarterly estimated state/federal taxes throughout the year. Then when I do my taxes, I either get a refund or have to pay a little more to adjust for what really happened. Is that not the case if you’re a business with employees? Are you saying that you haven’t paid your employees’ 2007 withholding, social security/medicare, and unemployment taxes at all?
I’m wondering because at least for me, those quarterly taxes I pay are the biggest checks I write. The IRS allows an option where I could pay the full year’s estimate in advance, but that would be a huge outlay all at once–much more than I want to handle. Yet I get the impression that you’re in that exact position, only worse, because your taxes are for you plus all of your employees. Is there something about the situation that I’m not getting? You say that you can “make it through this mess,” but I’m really confused as to how you think you’d actually do that, unless I’m really misreading the situation.
Your post made me curious enough to look at the internet and try to find out if employees could experience repercussions if their employers don’t pay payroll taxes on their behalf. I didn’t find the answer, but did find a 2004 article in the Journal of Accountancy about the penalties you could incur if you haven’t/can’t pay the taxes and if they haven’t changed the laws. The article can be found at: http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/nov2004/godfrey.htm
DK I think you may need a payroll company or something to handle the payroll and payroll tax issues. Since you have employees you should be withholding taxes for them, based on their elected allowances and extra withholding on W-4s, plus the 15.4% for social security and Medicare (you pay half and employee pays half) on their paychecks. Did you get W-2s out to your employees by Jan 31? If this isn’t the case you should do a 1099 for them, but then your employees aren’t going to be happy fronting the 15.4% social security/Medicare taxes on top of their income taxes. I’m not sure how long you have run your business for but clearly you know how to make money at it which is awesome, the IRS part is never fun to deal with though.
@ Jim – I do use a payroll service now. And I did get w-2’s out by Jan 31. I just didn’t implement the payroll service until the last quarter of 2007. It’s something I should have done years ago.
DK, when I look at your little cartoon avatar, I imagine that your hands are pulling out your pockets, to display them both, empty…