Payroll

A payroll is a company's list of its employees, but the term is commonly used to refer to:

Payroll in the sense of "money paid to employees" plays a major role in a company for several reasons.

From an accounting perspective, payroll is crucial because payroll and payroll taxes considerably affect the net income of most companies and because they are subject to laws and regulations (e.g. in the US, payroll is subject to federal, state, and local regulations).

From a human resources viewpoint, the payroll department is critical because employees are sensitive to payroll errors and irregularities: Good employee morale requires payroll to be paid timely and accurately. The primary mission of the payroll department is to ensure that all employees are paid accurately and timely with the correct withholdings and deductions, and that the withholdings and deductions are remitted in a timely manner. This includes salary payments, tax withholdings, and deductions from paychecks.

Government agencies at various levels require employers to withhold income taxes from employees' wages.

In the United States, "payroll taxes" are separate from income taxes, although they are levied on employers in proportion to salary; the programs they fund include Social Security, and Medicare. U.S. income and payroll taxes collected through deductions are considered to be trust fund taxes, because the employer holds the deducted money in trust for later remittance.

Before considering the payroll taxes it's necessary to talk about the basic formula for the Net Pay. From gross pay (the salary paid to the employee) one or more deductions are subtracted, to arrive at Net Pay. Thus the employee's gross pay (pay rate times number of hours worked, including any overtime) minus payroll tax deductions, minus voluntary payroll deductions, is equal to Net Pay. Payroll tax deductions play a critical role and because they are provided by law they are known as Statutory payroll tax deductions.

The employer must withhold payroll taxes from an employee's check and hand them over to several tax agencies by law. Payroll taxes include the following:

References include the following publications:

In the earlier part we have considered payroll taxes related to employee's side. Now it's the moment to talk about the Employer Payroll Taxes Employers are responsible for paying their portion of payroll taxes. These payroll taxes are an expense over and above the expense of an employee's gross pay. The employer-portion of payroll taxes include the following:

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Wikipedia