On Aug. 8, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the secretary of the Treasury to defer the withholding, deposit, and payment obligations for certain employee payroll taxes from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2020. Johns Hopkins could have implemented this deferral and collected tax payments from its employees in early 2021, but given the time- and resource-intensive efforts required to implement the process, coupled with the burden it would create for employees in the new year, both the health system and university have decided to forgo that option.
Employees do not need to take any action at this time.
Johns Hopkins' tax offices said that their review of the matter, including the related guidance issued by the Department of the Treasury on Aug. 28, concluded that it was unclear whether the deferral could be compliantly completed within 2020. In addition, under the current tax rules, taking action would not result in a permanent reduction of employee tax but would simply defer the timing of the tax payments for the employee into early 2021.
The tax offices also received a number of requests from employees to opt out of the deferral should Johns Hopkins choose to implement it.
Anyone with questions should contact their divisional HR manager.
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