New FICA/Payroll Tax Withholding for 2011

Published on Tuesday, January 18, 2011

As you begin to prepare your first payroll checks of the new year and make your 941 deposits you may notice a difference in the Fica amounts. Since we can all remember, the employer portion and employee portion of FICA has always been the same amount, but beginning in 2011 this has changed. Employees have received a 2% increase to their net paycheck courtesy of the U.S. government. The amount withheld from employee paychecks for FICA is now 4.2%, while the employer portion continues to be 6.2%. So as you prepare payroll for 2011 and begin to make those payroll deposits for 2011 take note of this change. If you use Quickbooks to process payroll and have downloaded the payroll update for 2011 this change will be reflected in your software via the update. As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions we can answer on this or any other issues or concerns that arise.

Shawn Ryan, CPA