Deductions & credits

just to add to @Anonymous  excellent response, if your daughter was an employee half that $261 would have been  withheld from her paycheck in the form of social security and medicare taxes. And then the employer would have paid a similar amount for their share of those same taxes.  

 

If you are self employed, the government still collects the same amount, but it all comes from the "employee'  It is collected regardless of the standard deduction amount.   Otherwise, there would be HUGE incentives to be self employed and literally  NO ONE would be paying into the social security fund or to the medicare fund