How do we fix not having registered as a household employer?

April 5, 2009 11:51 AM

Last year, I hired someone to clean my house. I didn't do the correct registrations for US tax purposes. How do I make this right?

Last year we hired someone to clean our house every couple of weeks. We wanted to comply with the law, so we did this above the table with the agreement that we would pay social security and medicare and such. We tracked all the payments to make sure this would happen.

What we missed was that we were supposed to register as an employer and employee in advance and file a W-2, and maybe other things. We didn't do this, though we did track all the payments to report them on our taxes. Now, doing the taxes, I realized this omission. How do we make this right? We are over the $1600 limit.

Any ideas? I won't take answers as legal advice, and am consulting an accountant tomorrow.

posted by carpographer to Work & Money (4 answers total)

I did look at my tax software (TurboTax) which offered the option of putting "applied for" in the space for the EIN number and then doing the application.
posted by metahawk at 12:31 PM on April 5, 2009

Also, I would sit down and calculate the W2 numbers asap so you can give them to your employee right away since your cleaner needs to be filing his or her own return.
posted by metahawk at 12:33 PM on April 5, 2009

Any reason you can't save yourself a lot of hassle (as well as additional payroll taxes you'll be required to pay) and just send a 1099? You'll still be completely above board, it's just incumbent on your cleaning person to pay her (I assume it's a "her" here) taxes herself. Which, if she's paying taxes on any of this income, she's probably already doing.
posted by mkultra at 2:49 PM on April 5, 2009

Good luck on your confirmation hearings, carpographer.
posted by codswallop at 10:10 PM on April 5, 2009 [1 favorite]