Per the IRS form instructions:
Schedule H is required if any of these are true:
- You withheld income taxes for a household employee
- You withhold federal income tax during for any household employee
- You paid total cash wages of $1,000 or more in any calendar quarter of 2022 or 2023 to all household employees? Don't count cash wages paid to your spouse, your child under age 21, or your parent.
Lacerte won't complete the remaining questions on the Schedule H once a question is answered Yes.
- For example, if question A is marked Yes, questions B and C won't be completed. If question A is marked No and question B is marked Yes, then question C won't be completed.
- Depending on your answers, you may find that you only have to complete Lines A, 1 through 4, 6, 8, and 9.
Household employees: If you hired someone to do household work and you could control what work he or she did and how he or she did it, you had a household employee. This is true even if you gave the employee freedom of action. What matters is that you had the right to control the details of how the work was done.
Follow these steps in Lacerte:
- Go to Screen 42, Household Employment Taxes (Sch. H).
- Enter the Employer identification number.
- Schedule H can't be filed without an EIN. A Social Security number can't be used in place of an EIN
- Select Taxpayer, Spouse, or Joint.
- Select the box Not filing with Form 1040 (if the Form 1040 or 1040A isn't required to be filed). If selected, the taxpayers address will print in Part IV.
- Select the box Paid any one employee cash wages of $2,000 or more, if applicable (Question A).
- Select the box Withheld federal income taxes for household employee, if applicable (Question B).
- Complete all other applicable information under the subsection Social Security, Medicare, and Income Taxes for Schedule H, Part I.
- Scroll down to the Federal Unemployment Tax subsection.
- Select the box Paid total cash wages of $1,000 or more in any calendar quarter of2022 or 2023 to generate Part II of Schedule H, Page 2 (Question C).
- Enter an appropriate amount in Total cash wages subject to FUTA tax. This amount is the total cash wages subject to FUTA tax, which prints on Schedule H, Line 21 (New York state employers, refer to notes below).
- Select the boxes under the All Three Are Mandatory for Section A subsection. This will generate information on Schedule H, Page 2, Part II, Section A.
- Complete the information under the Section A subsection.
- Complete the information under the Section B subsection, if any question for Section A is answered No (not selected).
- Enter the appropriate adjustments under the More Than 2 States subsection, if more than 2 states are entered for the return. Entries in these fields adjust the automatic calculation of Schedule H, Line 19.
If the taxpayer was a New York state employer: they're required to complete a supplemental worksheet within the instructions to Schedule H. This worksheet requires the identification of New York wages from Schedule H, Line 21.
- If any wages subject to FUTA are entered with a NY state identifier, those amounts will be carried to Line 2 of the worksheet for New York state employers.
- Alternatively, the amount of New York wages can be entered in New York wages [O], (Screen 42, Code 34). An entry in this code will suppress the printing of the worksheet for New York state employers.
Additional information
An override is also available at the bottom of the screen in the Schedule H [O] field, (code 32). If you override the Schedule H amount, you must manually prepare and attach Schedule H to the return.
