SE quarterly taxes for single owner LLC

[KrIsTeNTuRnEr]

I have a counseling practice, which is a single-owner LLC and one contract employee.  I am the therapist who sees all the clients and the contract employee does office work such as billing.  We do not have a payroll system set up, we just manually write paychecks for the two of us weekly with no taxes withheld.  The contract employee makes a fixed amount and my payment varies from week to week.  How do I calculate what the quarterly taxes withheld should be, and how do I catch up since we have not paid quarterly taxes this year?  We use quickbooks for our bookkeeping.  Would it be easier to set up payroll for the two of us, but does that have to be a fixed amount every week? Thank you!

[dev145]

Since your LLC is a single member LLC, you do not take a paycheck for yourself unless LLC is elected to be treated as Corporation. If you write a check to yourself, it should be reported as owner's draw in QuickBooks.  But there should not be any payroll for you.

As for the other person, first you have to decide if the person is employee or independent contractor. If an employee then, you should set up a payroll with either QuickBooks or other provider and pay regularly. You will have to file payroll returns and pay tax withholding to IRS and state if applicable.  Your payroll provider should be able to help with setting up payroll and filing necessary returns and forms.  You can pay fixed amount or different amount, it all depends on you and the other person. See below link about difference between employee and contractors. 

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-o...

If person is contractor, make sure to have him/her fill out form w9 and then issue a form 1099-NEC after tax year ends.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-nec

Thank you.