How to Find Out How Much Taxes I Have Paid to Employees
Federal law requires all employers to withhold certain taxes from employees' pay. Specifically, you must withhold the employee's estimated income tax, plus Social Security tax, Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Medicare tax, and FUTA, or Federal Unemployment Tax. You are responsible for keeping careful payroll records. However, things happen. If you have had a data loss or other event and you need to reconstruct your payroll records, identify how much payroll-related tax you have sent to the Internal Revenue Service.
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Instructions
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Pull your bank records. Your bank will have a record of all withdrawals you have made from your business checking account.
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Look through your bank records for any withdrawals via EFTPS, which stands for Electronic Federal Tax Payment System. This is the electronic system the IRS uses to collect payroll taxes from employers.
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Total the withdrawals over the desired time period. This is the total amount of payroll tax you have forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service over the desired period of time.
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Pull your quarterly income tax return records. Go back through your tax records and examine all your prior IRS Form 941, Employers' Quarterly Income Tax Returns. These documents will also help you identify how much money you were supposed to have forwarded to the IRS; it will provide a detailed, itemized list of how much tax was due to income tax withheld from employees' pay, and how much was due to Social Security and Medicare. However, whether you actually forwarded the money to the IRS is a separate question. Check your bank records for these transfers.
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Pull copies of your last IRS Form 940, which is the Federal Unemployment Tax return. This will detail any payments that were due to the IRS for Federal Unemployment Tax.
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Replace any missing returns by filing a Form 4506, which is a request for a copy of a tax return. You may need to do so if your historical tax records are lost, missing or stolen. The IRS will send you a copy of the return documents it has on file for you. These records will contain the amount of tax you paid at the time you filed the return.
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