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Payroll Year-End Checklist

Payroll Year-End Checklist

End of year questionnaire to gather information for filing taxes
Raquel Deodanes, MS, CPA avatar
Written by Raquel Deodanes, MS, CPA. Updated over a week ago

Payroll connects a lot of tax, accounting, business, and personal things together. Here’s a checklist of what you need to run through payroll to make sure your contributions, deferrals, wages, and benefits are reported properly.

Let's begin wrapping up this year's financials! You see these reminders on your dashboard in Gusto's End of the Year Spot Check in late November. Some of these may not apply to you.

Shareholders who own over 2% of your company in Gusto

  • Have you added them in Gusto? To check, go to your owners’ People pages and make sure they’re marked as 2% shareholders under "Employment details." To add someone as an owner, follow these instructions.

Employees’ work addresses

Health Insurance

  • Have you added your medical, dental, vision, insurance to Gusto?

You’ll have to enter employees' benefit contributions and deductions manually and make plan changes.

If you have added your benefits but have untracked health insurance amounts, reach out to us.

Fringe Benefits

  • If you offered fringe benefits for your employees for 2020, have you added them to your Gusto account?

We need to make sure all fringe benefits have been added and taxed appropriately. If you haven't already done so, please add all your fringe benefits to Gusto.

Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA)

  • Please do not enter your Health Reimbursements in Gusto or QBO! As an S-corp employee-owner, you do not qualify for HRA. If you have already done so, do not panic! Reach out to us and we will reclassify those reimbursements to distributions in QBO and make sure you don't show them on your W-2 and no taxes are paid on them.

Retirement: Solo 401k, Roth IRA

  • Did you enter retirement deductions and contributions for 2020 in Gusto?

If you haven’t added these in, please gather the total year-to-date retirement employee deduction and employer contribution amounts and provide them to our team. These totals will be included in your year-end filings and W-2s.

Independent Contractors

  • Have you added all of your independent contractors to Gusto (costs $6/month)? AND

  • Have you added all 2021 contractor payments?

Please add all missing contractors to Gusto and add any historical payments from 2020 if you want Gusto to file 1099 for your contractors.

Missed Payrolls

  • Have you run enough payroll for the year?

You still have until December 14th to run any further payments. If your business is short on cash or experienced economic hardship this year, please feel free to preserve your cash reserves and press pause on payroll.

If you have questions on the above, email us at [email protected]. Otherwise, you are all done! Good job completing your payroll year-end checklist.

Getting ready for 2022

State Employer Tax rates

  • Unless your LLC is registered in Washington and you are the only employee of your business, you are not exempt from payroll taxes. The state will send documentation on new payroll tax rates around November. If your rates change, these need to be updated in Gusto so they can file accurate taxes for you.

Health (Medical, Dental, Vision) Insurance / Health Savings Account (HSA)

  • Changes in your plan (e.g. premiums, etc.) should be updated in Gusto annually

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