Confused about federal unemployment taxes - how often are these deposited by NYS Department of Labor?
I'm trying to understand how the federal unemployment tax system works with my NYS Department of Labor claim. I've been receiving unemployment benefits for about 6 weeks now and I'm wondering how often the federal unemployment taxes get deposited or processed? My employer used to handle all this stuff so I'm completely lost on how the tax side works when you're on unemployment. Is this something I need to worry about or does NYS Department of Labor handle it automatically? I don't want to mess anything up come tax season.
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Liam Brown
The federal unemployment taxes (FUTA) are actually paid by employers, not something that gets deposited from your benefits. Your employer pays FUTA taxes quarterly to fund the unemployment system. What you might be thinking of is the federal income tax withholding from your unemployment benefits, which you can request when you file your weekly claims through the NYS Department of Labor system.
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Emma Johnson
•Oh wow, I had no idea! So I don't need to worry about paying federal unemployment taxes myself? I was getting really stressed thinking I had to figure out some quarterly payment schedule.
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Olivia Garcia
yeah i was confused about this too when i first started collecting. the tax withholding option is on your weekly claim form where it asks if you want federal taxes taken out. i think its 10% if you choose it
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Noah Lee
•It's actually 10% for federal and you can also choose state tax withholding. I'd recommend doing it if you usually owe taxes at the end of the year, otherwise you might get hit with a big bill. NYS Department of Labor makes it pretty easy to change this option if you need to.
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Ava Hernandez
I've been dealing with NYS Department of Labor for months and the phone system is impossible! If you need to change your tax withholding or ask questions about this stuff, good luck getting through. I found this service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that actually gets you connected to real NYS Department of Labor agents. They have a video demo at https://youtu.be/qyftW-mnTNI showing how it works. Saved me hours of calling and getting disconnected.
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Emma Johnson
•That sounds really helpful! I was dreading having to call them about anything. Does it actually work for getting through?
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Ava Hernandez
•Yeah it worked for me when I needed to fix an issue with my weekly claims. Way better than the usual runaround you get trying to call directly.
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Isabella Martin
The whole tax situation with unemployment is so frustrating. They don't explain any of this clearly when you first apply. I ended up owing like $800 at tax time because I didn't know about the withholding option. NYS Department of Labor really needs to do better at educating people about this stuff upfront.
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Elijah Jackson
•Ugh same thing happened to my sister last year! She had no idea unemployment was taxable income.
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