Home

Your First Payroll Tax Calendar: Federal Deposits, Form 941, W-2 and State Quarterly Reports

Official sources checked: November 13, 2026. AI-assisted draft, pending editor review.

The first paycheck went out, the employee is happy, and you exhaled. Then you notice the withholding sitting in your bank account isn't yours. It has to reach the IRS and your state on a schedule, and the schedule has more dates than most first-time owners expect. Missing one costs penalties and interest even when the money was set aside.

Take a made-up owner, Priya, who hired her first employee in October 2026. She pays every other Friday: October 16 and 30, November 13 and 27, and December 11. The next one would fall on Christmas, so she pays on Thursday, December 24 instead. Each deadline below is taken from the IRS or the state agency and laid out in the order Priya meets it. Check it against the notices for your own accounts, which can add dates.

The IRS sets your deposit schedule from a lookback period. IRS Publication 15 says Form 941 filers are monthly schedule depositors for the first calendar year of the business, because the tax in the lookback period before the business started counts as zero. So in 2026, Priya deposits monthly.

Under the monthly schedule, the employment taxes on wages paid during a month are due by the 15th of the following month. That covers the federal income tax she withheld and both halves of Social Security and Medicare, plus Additional Medicare Tax if any one employee's wages pass $200,000. One exception overrides everything: Publication 15's $100,000 next-day rule says that if taxes reach $100,000 on any day, the deposit is due the next business day, and the employer becomes a semiweekly depositor from then on. A first-year café won't get near it, but it's worth knowing it exists.

Form 941 is the quarterly return that reconciles what Priya withheld and deposited. Its regular due dates are the last day of the month after each quarter: April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31. Publication 15 lets an employer that deposited every quarter's tax on time file by the 10th of the second month instead.

FUTA works differently. The tax is paid only on the first $7,000 of each employee's wages each year, and Publication 15 says to deposit it when the undeposited amount is over $500. If the employee earns at least $7,000 in the year and the full state credit applies, the year's FUTA is $7,000 x 0.6% = $42, so Priya pays it with Form 940 instead of making a separate deposit. Employers in a state with a FUTA credit reduction pay a higher rate, so check your state's status for the year.

Each state has its own quarterly report for unemployment insurance and, where there's a state income tax, withholding. These are the fourth-quarter 2026 dates.

New Jersey's January 30 receipt rule needs its own calendar entry. The IRS, California and New York move a weekend due date to the next business day. New Jersey says the report must be received by the 30th regardless, so Priya's safe date there is the Friday before.

After the fourth-quarter filing, the monthly deposit and quarterly reconciliation cycle repeats. Federal deposits stay monthly through 2027 too. Her 2027 lookback period runs from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, before she had employees, so it counts as zero, well under the $50,000 line that would make her a semiweekly depositor.

If Priya moves to a payroll service, the service may make these deposits and filings under its contract, but she stays responsible for them as the employer. Check the provider's filings against this list for the first quarter.

Want the next guide when it's published? Join the list.