Employers are required to withhold federal income tax, Medicare and one half of social security taxes from their employees’ wages and pay them to the IRS. Many employers frequently abuse this requirement. Intentionally failing to pay these payroll taxes to the IRS can amount to fraud. And, for those who commit this fraud, the IRS is turning up the heat. Like most government agencies, the IRS has suffered from staff cuts. As a result, they are starting to go after the easiest issues to prosecute…and payroll tax fraud is one of them.

The IRS is not only serious about catching employment tax fraud, but also aggressive about prosecuting it. For 2015, the last full year where data has been reported, the IRS assessed jail time in 77.4 percent of cases, with the average jail time being 24 months. Clearly, this is not something to be taken lightly.

Like all IRS-related problems, if you have intentionally committed payroll tax fraud or been grossly negligent in not paying payroll taxes to the government, there are remedies. They are, however, complicated. Call us at UnTax immediately. Remember: your payroll tax problems – and the IRS – are not going to simply go away by themselves.