The IRS has updated Notice 931 (Deposit Requirements for Employment Taxes) to include the tax deposit rules for the 2023 year.
The deposit schedule employers must use (i.e., monthly or semi-weekly) is based on the total tax liability they reported during the lookback period. For employers filing Form 941 (Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return), an employer’s deposit schedule for 2023 is based on the lookback period beginning July 1, 2021 and ending June 30, 2022. An employer reporting $50,000 or less of Form 941 taxes for the lookback period is a monthly depositor, and an employer reporting more than $50,000 of Form 941 taxes is a semiweekly depositor.
An employer with a Form 941 tax liability of less than $2,500 during the current or preceding quarter, who does not incur a $100,000 next-day deposit obligation during the current quarter, is not required to make monthly or semiweekly deposits if the taxes are paid in full with a timely filed return. An employer accumulating a tax liability of $100,000 or more on any day during a deposit period must deposit the tax by the next “business day,” regardless of whether the employer is a monthly or semiweekly depositor. A “business day” is any day other than a Saturday, Sunday, or a “legal holiday.” The term “legal holiday” means any legal holiday in the District of Columbia.
The IRS considers a new employer’s tax liability to be zero, which makes a new employer a monthly depositor for the first year of business.
The lookback period for annual return filers (Forms 943, 944, 945, or CT-1) is the calendar year preceding the previous year. The lookback period for 2023 tax deposits is the 2020 tax year.
Adjustments: The lookback period is based on the tax liability as originally reported. If an employer subsequently files Form 941-X, 943-X, 944-X, 945-X, or CT-1X to correct errors on the original return, the corrections are not taken into consideration for purposes of the lookback period computation.
Source: Thomson Reuters