Household Employer Resource Center

If you paid a household worker $3,000 or more in 2026, you have federal employment-tax obligations: FICA (Social Security + Medicare), FUTA, a Schedule H attached to your 1040, and a W-2 issued by February 1, 2027. State obligations layer on top — every state has unemployment insurance, and many add income tax withholding, disability insurance, or paid family leave premiums.

This resource center collects everything you need in one place: a free calculator that runs the math for any state, line-by-line guides for the forms (Schedule H, W-2, state withholding returns), and per-state breakdowns of rates, thresholds, and deadlines. The cheat sheet PDF distills the most-used numbers into a single page you can keep next to your records.

Every guide is reviewed against the current IRS Publication 926, state agency websites, and Social Security Administration cost-of-living announcements. Tax rates and wage bases change each year; we update the resources as the IRS, SSA, and state agencies publish new figures.