941 taxes

Two important types of returns taxed to the employers are the Employer's Quarterly federal tax return and employer's annual federal tax returns. These two taxes are also termed as 941 taxes and 944 taxes respectively. For the return filed under the form 941 if your tax liability of employer's tax is lesser than or equal to $2,500 then these taxes can be filed along with your returns. However if the amount is above $2,500 then you must file these taxes along with the 941 form periodically according to your deposit schedule which can be monthly or semi-weekly or other such terms. These deposits can be made in two ways suited to your convenience.
You can either use the Electronic federal tax payment system or the (EFTPS) using accounts and other prescribed sources. But if these do not suit you, you can use the federal tax deposit coupons. These coupons had been introduced for to help the taxpayers to deposit the taxes easily. This payment is done by paying an authorized financial institution of your convenience along with the duly filled Form 8109(federal tax deposit coupon). While submitting your 941 taxes this way it is important that you write your name, type of tax, the tax period under which you are scheduled to deposit your 941 taxes and your employer identification number correctly. Lastly its is important to note that the checks or money orders that you use to deposit these taxes should be made in the name of the financial institutions and not that of IRS, also penalties are levied for direct submission to IRS (through mail or such deposit) and late payment.
The form 941 is a comprehensive tax filing form since it covers the amount of federal income tax withheld along with the social security and Medicare related taxes.
Another important clause to know while filing 941 taxes is that the advance EIC payments which you have made to your employees are reducible from these taxes. To know more about these reductions refer to topic 754 provided by the IRS. Thus just like normal taxes the net amount is decided based on your total tax owed after subtraction of reductions like that resulting from advance EIC payments to your employees. 

In the year 2006 the IRS has introduced a newer employer tax form 944. This is an annual tax return form for withheld federal income taxes, social security and Medicare related taxes. Since this form is annual it helps makes the tax filing process easier since you have to file the 941 taxes only once instead of four times a year. Also this can be filed only by those employers who are notifies by the IRS that they qualify for filing employer taxes using form 944, while others must use the 941 tax form and file it four time a year. This form is generally given to small business who have annual employers taxes less than or equal to $1,000.
When you apply for an Employer identification number, the IRS generally sends a book of Federal tax deposit coupons in which every coupon has a unique number. The IRS keeps tracks of the usage of these coupons and when it notices that you are about to exhaust your current book of coupons it sends in new ones automatically.
Most of the problems and confusion regarding these taxes are due to the semi-weekly payment plans. The plan allotted to you is based on the amount of taxes you paid in the last quarter which is also called the look back year/ period. For those who pay less than $50,000 worth of employer tax during the look back period, a monthly payment plan is allotted under which the monthly accumulated tax has to be paid by the 15th of the next month, failure to do which results in late deposit penalties. For those whose employers and other such taxes have been more than $50,000 in the look back period a semi weekly plan is allotted. The schedule is as follows:
If you make payments to your payments to your employees on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday then you must submit your 941 taxes by the next Wednesday. And for those submitted on Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday the 941 tax payment has to be made by Friday. It is essential to keep a track of your schedule and deposit your 941 taxes accordingly.