Payments to Payroll Service Acting as "Employer of Record"

[ardpub]

I'm a small film production company, filing as a single-member LLC. Last year, I used a payroll service (“employer of record service”) to handle payroll and tax filings related to hiring a single employee for a one day shoot. How do I go about deducting these expenses?  Can I just write off the gross payment to the payroll service in some category, or do I need to add the employee as my own and go that route?

[MinhT1]

The employee is not your employee but the employee of the payroll service company.

Your expense is the gross payment you paid to the payroll company and you can deduct it as Contract labor.