Last Minute Tax Tip: Hire Your Kids

Hire your kids

Reduce your taxes, hire your kids to work for you!

Do you own your own small business as a sole proprietorship? Do you have kids? If so, did you know that you can pay your kids to work in your business and they won’t be subject to social security and Medicare taxes? Now if you pay them more than their standard deduction, they could be subject to income tax withholding but even so, not having to pay the employment tax is a big savings. You also don’t have to pay Federal Unemployment taxes either.

Why is this good to know? Well if you pay your kids wages from your business, it’s a business deduction and that’s money you’re keeping in the family and not paying self employment taxes on. It’s important to keep the wages commensurate with work that the kids actually perform. The IRS isn’t going to buy the idea that your 4 year old is earning $50,000 a year doing statistical analysis for your company. But what can your kids actually do?

My first job was handling all of the scut work that the secretaries in the office wouldn’t do. I cleaned the white board in the meeting room, made the coffee, made photocopies and ran errands. I was happy because I was getting paid, the secretaries were happy because they didn’t have to do those jobs any more, and the boss was happy because his staff was happy. I was 15 at the time, but frankly a much younger kid could have handled that job.

My son’s in college now, but he used to be my IT guy. For the cost of a Chucky Cheese pizza and some tokens, he’d take care of any computer problems I had. After he left for school, I had to hire a professional to help me. The freelance IT person I hire costs me $99 per hour. I had no idea how valuable my son was as an employee until he went away. I had never paid him a wage. (Granted, I’m paying through the nose for tuition but that’s another story.) What I should have done was pay him a wage and let him buy his own pizza. That would have reduced my self-employment taxes.

So what about your kids, do they help you with your business? Can they? Would they? If the answer is yes, then you might want to consider putting them on the payroll.

Who’s allowed to do this? There are only two categories of businesses where you can put your children on the payroll without paying employment taxes. One is sole proprietors; that’s businesses that file a schedule C with their 1040 tax return. The other is partnerships where both of the partners are the parents of the children working. If there is even one partner who is not a parent of the child, then you must pay the payroll taxes. Also, if you own a corporation of any kind, you must pay employment taxes on your child’s wages.

With the year end fast approaching, and winter break heading this way, now might be a perfect time to test the waters for hiring your kids. The money you pay them now will reduce your taxable income for 2010.

Employee or Contract Labor

With the economy being in turmoil, a lot of people are turning to contract labor jobs. That’s where the company doesn’t hire you as a regular employee, even though you work for it. You won’t receive a W2 at tax time, but you will receive a form 1099MISC and you will be expected to pay tax on that.

Contract labor is good for employers who are a little gun shy over hiring. It’s also good for employees who may need to work to put food on the table, but don’t want to commit to a job that they wouldn’t ordinarily take.

If you’re thinking about accepting a contract labor type job, here’s a few things you should know. First, when you receive a form 1099MISC, the IRS treats that as self employment income. That means, at tax time you’re going to have to file a Schedule C along with your 1040 long form. You will be required to pay your own Social Security and Medicare taxes, in addition to paying what your employer would normally have withheld.

Let’s use an example: Heather and Melanie are both high school seniors looking for summer jobs. Heather gets a job at McDonald’s making $10 an hour. Melanie gets a contract labor position also making $10 an hour. They both work 20 hours a week. Since this is the only income the girls will make all year, we’re not even going to look at regular income tax (they won’t owe any) we’re just going to look at their take home pay and self employment taxes.

Since Heather works as an employee, McDonad’s is required to withhold her Social Security and Medicare taxes (FICA). Heather makes $200 a week, but she’ll only take home $184.70 because McDonald’s will hold back $15.30 to pay her FICA. What most people don’t realize is that in addition to the money McDonald’s holds out of Heather’s paycheck, McDonald’s also pays an additional $15.30 towards Heather’s FICA. At the end of 12 weeks, Heather will have $2,216.40 that she was paid by McDonald’s. She will owe no income tax at the end of the year.

Now let’s look at Melanie. As a contract laborer, Melanie has no FICA withheld from her pay. For one week, she gets a check for $200. At the end of 12 weeks, she’ll have been paid $2,400. The difference here is that Melanie will have a tax bill of $339 that she’ll owe at tax time. After paying her taxes, Melanie will only have cleared $2,061.

[Geek alert: if you checked my math, you’d say. “but 2400 times 15.3% is $367” -and yes, you’re right. The first $433.13 of self employment income isn’t taxed so the actual equation is income x .9235 x .153.]

In our example here, it’s better to be hired as an employee because the company pays half of your payroll taxes. But that doesn’t mean that you should not take that contract labor job. For one thing, you may be able to write off some of your job expenses, which would reduce your self-employment taxes. Or, you might negotiate a higher hourly wage rate. An increase of 7.65% would basically cover the additional tax paid by the employer. Knowledge is power. Knowing how you’ll be taxed and how much you’ll be taxed let’s you make smart decisions.