Paid Extra SSN & Medicare Tax

[sravannekkanti]

HI,

My employer runs my pay check Monthly once. He made a mistake on one of the pay checks where I was deducted $1118.20 extra in form of SSN & Medicare taxes, after little research i found that my employer had deducted  extra percentage of SSN & Medicare Taxes than usually i have to get deducted. How do i claim for refund this extra amount during Tax returns, Please help.

Thanks

[VolvoGirl]

So did you pay too much in for 2020?  If it is from one employer you have to get it back from him and get a corrected W2.  Will you 2020 w2 be wrong?

SS should be 6.2% up to a max of $8,537.40 on $137,700 of wages.  Medicare is 1.45% no max.

[Opus 17]

There is no procedure on your federal tax return to claim a refund of excess Social Security or Medicare withholding if it was due to the mistake of a single employer. (there is a procedure if you work for more than one employer and the total withholding was more than the annual maximum, but not if this was a mistake of a single employer.)

your employer must fix this. The employer must correct your W-2, refund the excess withholding, and also correct their own quarterly tax statements.

If your employer refuses to fix the mistake, you can try to get a refund of the excess by filing form 843. This form is not supported by TurboTax and you will have to do it manually. You will need a letter from your employer acknowledging the mistake and in which the employer states that they will not be making the adjustment themselves.  

[sravannekkanti]

This is from one employer. My annual pay is $93,948
My visa is H1-B from Oct 01,2020 so I have to start paying SSN & Medicare taxes which are 6.2 % & 1.45 % respectively. Before Oct01,2020 I never paid SSN & medicare taxes bcz I was on Student Visa.

For the Pay check period Oct 01-Oct 31, 2020 I had paid 17.7 % in SSN & 4.1 % in Medicare. So i have to get back 11.5 % from SSN and 3.05 % from Medicare. So, getting back from employer is the only option here ???

[dmertz]

It's the only option unless the employer refuses to make the correction.   (Refusal to make the correction would be a tax-code violation by the employer).

[MissMCJ]

That is the only option.  If you just file with the incorrect amounts the IRS will catch it at some point and contact you to get it corrected.  Probably will take a year of so, but they will contact you eventually.  The best thing to do is contact the employer and get it corrected before you file.

[Opus 17 · Accepted solution]

As I said, you can’t get it refunded on your form 1040 tax return. You might be able to get a refund by filing a form 843, but that will also put the IRS on notice that your employer is violating the tax code. I’m sure your employer doesn’t want to be audited, and it is in their best interest to correct this problem before they issue your W-2 at the end of January.