[US] $7 million mess after 2020 census workers’ payroll tax delay

[US] $7 million mess after 2020 census workers’ payroll tax delay
08 Nov 2021

The U.S. Census Bureau has been left with a $7 million accounting mess after former President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the federal agency to pause payroll taxes for certain employees in 2020, including many temporary 2020 census workers, WABE reports.

NPR has learned that the bureau was one of many federal agencies directed to stop collecting some employees’ share of a payroll tax that helps fund the Social Security system in the final months of 2020. The deferral applied to workers earning less than $4,000 before taxes each pay period.

“In total, $7,078,909 in payroll tax collections were deferred for 177,964 temporary employees,” the Census Bureau confirmed to NPR in a statement.

Trump had sold the push as a way to get “bigger paychecks for working families” during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration, at the time, said it would try to convince Congress to forgive the payroll taxes. However, without movement from lawmakers, the extra money essentially became a temporary loan that had to eventually pay back.

The situation has created a real accounting challenge for the bureau; it temporarily employed hundreds of thousands of workers for last year’s national headcount.

Difficulty reaching former workers has led the Census Bureau to defer the collection of some of those Social Security taxes.

“We determined that 147,619 employees owed substantially less than what it would cost to collect the debt from them,” the bureau said. 

It reportedly failed to answer NPR’s questions about the total amount of money the bureau has decided to stop trying to collect and how those costs will be covered.

The bureau said it has sent letters and emails to around 28,000 former census workers who owe unpaid taxes.

“It’s kind of a shock seeing that email from the Census Bureau just so long after the fact,” Alex Almeida of Phoenix said. Alex was one of the workers who received notices in September, close to a year after ending a clerk job at a local census office in November 2020. “It was very upsetting in a way, like this is the thanks we get for all our efforts.”

The deadline for paying the deferred taxes is the end of this year, according to IRS information.


Source: WABE

(Link and quotes via original reporting)

The U.S. Census Bureau has been left with a $7 million accounting mess after former President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the federal agency to pause payroll taxes for certain employees in 2020, including many temporary 2020 census workers, WABE reports.

NPR has learned that the bureau was one of many federal agencies directed to stop collecting some employees’ share of a payroll tax that helps fund the Social Security system in the final months of 2020. The deferral applied to workers earning less than $4,000 before taxes each pay period.

“In total, $7,078,909 in payroll tax collections were deferred for 177,964 temporary employees,” the Census Bureau confirmed to NPR in a statement.

Trump had sold the push as a way to get “bigger paychecks for working families” during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration, at the time, said it would try to convince Congress to forgive the payroll taxes. However, without movement from lawmakers, the extra money essentially became a temporary loan that had to eventually pay back.

The situation has created a real accounting challenge for the bureau; it temporarily employed hundreds of thousands of workers for last year’s national headcount.

Difficulty reaching former workers has led the Census Bureau to defer the collection of some of those Social Security taxes.

“We determined that 147,619 employees owed substantially less than what it would cost to collect the debt from them,” the bureau said. 

It reportedly failed to answer NPR’s questions about the total amount of money the bureau has decided to stop trying to collect and how those costs will be covered.

The bureau said it has sent letters and emails to around 28,000 former census workers who owe unpaid taxes.

“It’s kind of a shock seeing that email from the Census Bureau just so long after the fact,” Alex Almeida of Phoenix said. Alex was one of the workers who received notices in September, close to a year after ending a clerk job at a local census office in November 2020. “It was very upsetting in a way, like this is the thanks we get for all our efforts.”

The deadline for paying the deferred taxes is the end of this year, according to IRS information.


Source: WABE

(Link and quotes via original reporting)