Payroll liabilities
In accounting, payroll liabilities means what an employer owes on wages it has already paid — the income tax and the employees' share of Social Security and Medicare withheld from their pay, plus the employer's own payroll taxes — until it is deposited with the government. The withheld part was never the employer's money: IRS Pub. 15 calls it trust fund taxes.
- Layer
- Lexicon
- Defined in
- Lexicon
- Nearby
- 4
Not a rule
Bookkeeping mechanic — not codified; the obligation is in IRS Publication 15. US GAAP governs recognition, measurement and presentation — not the mechanics a bookkeeper uses to get there. Anyone citing a standard for this word is citing the wrong thing.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
The lessons that teach this
Accounting, 0 to 1 — a free course taught end to end on one month of one company, with the spreadsheet exercises to work it yourself.
- 05Recording the monthFourteen things happened to Northwind in September. Here is every one of them turned into an entry, with the reasoning that produced it.19 min
- 09Adjusting entriesFive entries nobody sends an invoice for, made on the last day of the month, that turn a record of transactions into a set of accounts.15 min
For founders
The same idea written for a founder: what it costs a startup that ignores it, and what to do in a real month.
- Balance sheet explained for startupsAssets equal liabilities plus equity. What each startup line means, from deferred revenue to the SAFE and the accumulated deficit, and why it must balance.
- Chart of accounts for startups: a starting templateA starting chart of accounts for a US startup: number ranges, the expense accounts you need, and when to add an account versus a class or tracking tag.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
- payroll expense (the gross wage)
- accrued wages (wages earned and not yet paid)
Nearby in the catalog
No component names this concept outright. These are the ones in its part of the system, which is a weaker claim — but a component nothing links to is a component nobody finds.
Also in Payables
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.