FICA and Over 60 Hours

Those student employees who are regularly working over 30 hours a week must be subjected to FICA taxation regardless of their enrollment. Each pay period, Student Payroll must override the FICA determination for those students who are enrolled at least half time and who are regularly working over 30 hours a week (or 60 hours per pay period).

 

Tax Services recommends that at the start of each term student employee supervisors identify which student workers will be regularly working over 30 hours and have those employees complete a Hire form to submit to Student Payroll. Student Payroll can then make a list of student employees who should be subjected to FICA and, prior to processing payroll, if necessary, switch on FICA via the employee set up screen.

 

After each pay period, to catch those student employees who are working over 30 hours on a regular basis but who have not completed the Hire form, run the ISRS Hours Worked report PR0212CP using the parameters of: pay period end date (MM/DD/YYYY), O = All other to print all employees except Nonresident Aliens, and 60 as the maximum hours. If an employee works more than 60 hours in two consecutive pay periods, their supervisor should be contacted and asked if this will be the employee’s regular work schedule. If so, then apply FICA for the rest of the term regardless of how many hours worked.

 

The data from the PR0212CP report can be copied into Notepad and then imported into an Excel spreadsheet to help track employee hours. Please contact Ann Page in Tax Services if you would like help with this export/import.