Am I liable for federal unemployment tax after receiving NYS Department of Labor benefits?
I just got my tax documents for 2024 and I'm confused about federal unemployment tax liability. I received unemployment benefits from NYS Department of Labor for about 8 months last year after being laid off from my marketing job. Now I'm seeing conflicting information online about whether I owe federal taxes on those UI payments. Some sites say unemployment is fully taxable, others mention exemptions. I had taxes withheld from my weekly claims but I'm worried it wasn't enough. Has anyone dealt with this? Do I need to pay additional federal taxes on my NYS Department of Labor benefits?
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Marcus Williams
Yes, unemployment benefits from NYS Department of Labor are considered taxable income by the IRS. You should have received a 1099-G form showing the total amount you received in 2024. If you had federal taxes withheld from your weekly claims (10% is the standard option), that should cover most of what you owe, but you might still owe additional depending on your total income for the year.
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Jessica Suarez
•I did get the 1099-G but the amount seems higher than what I remember receiving. Should I double-check this against my payment history on the my.ny.gov portal?
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Lily Young
wait so ALL unemployment money is taxable?? I thought there was some kind of exemption like there was during covid. I didn't have ANY taxes taken out of mine because I thought it was tax free!
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Marcus Williams
•The COVID exemption ended after 2020. Since 2021, all unemployment benefits are fully taxable at the federal level. You'll definitely want to set aside money for taxes if you didn't have withholding.
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Kennedy Morrison
I had a similar situation last year. The key is to check your 1099-G against your actual payment records. Sometimes there are discrepancies, especially if you had any overpayments that were later recovered. You can access your complete payment history through the NYS Department of Labor website to verify the amounts. If there's an error on the 1099-G, you'll need to contact them to get a corrected form.
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Wesley Hallow
•How long does it take to get a corrected 1099-G? I found a discrepancy in mine too but tax deadline is coming up fast.
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Justin Chang
This whole system is ridiculous. They take forever to process claims, then hit you with surprise tax bills. I had to call NYS Department of Labor like 50 times last year just to get my withholding set up properly, kept getting disconnected or told different things by different agents.
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Grace Thomas
•I had the same problem with reaching them! If you're still having trouble getting through to NYS Department of Labor agents, I found this service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that actually gets you through to a real person. They have a video demo at https://youtu.be/qyftW-mnTNI showing how it works. Saved me hours of calling and getting hung up on.
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Hunter Brighton
just file your taxes with what you got on the 1099-G, worst case you get audited and have to provide documentation later. the IRS has bigger fish to fry than unemployment recipients
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Jessica Suarez
Thanks everyone. I'm going to log into my.ny.gov tonight and compare my payment history with the 1099-G. Better to get this sorted out now than deal with problems later.
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Royal_GM_Mark
I went through this same situation last year! One thing that really helped me was keeping detailed records throughout the year. When you're checking your payment history on my.ny.gov, also look for any weeks where you had partial earnings reported - those can sometimes cause confusion on the 1099-G amounts. Also, if you had state taxes withheld too (which is separate from federal), make sure you're accounting for that correctly on your NY state return. The good news is that if you did have the 10% federal withholding, you're probably in decent shape tax-wise unless you had other significant income during the year.
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