Congress Extends 2% Payroll Tax Cut Till End of 2012

Congress late last week passed a new bill (and President Obama has already indicated he will sign it) to extend the 2% payroll tax cut from February 29, 2012 till the end of 2012.  This means that your employee’s FICA contribution will remain at 4.2% for the rest of the year instead of the schedule return to the normal 6.2% rate.

For self-employed farmers, your total FICA contribution will be 10.4% instead of the normal 12.4%.  As normal, it appears that election year politics is in play here and we would not expect this to continue into 2013.

I have seen several taxpayers calculate their employee’s paychecks for 2011 incorrectly and hope most of our farmers have already updated their payroll system to deduct and pay the proper amount.