Last Friday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) along with the U.S. Department of the Treasury published a new guidance relating deferral of the employee share of payroll taxes for social security. The guidance (Notice 2020-65) provides that an employer choosing to defer the payment of employee payroll taxes between now and the end of the year as authorized by President Trump’s August 8 Executive Order will be required to pay those deferred taxes between January 1, 2021 and April 30, 2021.  Any deferred taxes that are unpaid as of May 1, 2021 will begin to accrue interest and penalties at that time. The deferral (which became available as of September 1) is only applicable to those employees who earn less than $4,000 per bi-weekly pay period. Furthermore, there are no employer protections for those instances where an employee accepts the deferral but subsequently leaves the employ of that business before the deferred taxes are paid. In such an instance, the employer would still be responsible for the employee’s deferred portion of taxes despite having no way to then collect the funds from the former employee. For that and other reasons, it is believed that few employers will offer the deferral to their workers. The Coalition of Franchisee Associations (CFA) released an update on the payroll tax deferral issue earlier this week which you may find helpful as well.