Schedule H - Who Must File

If any of the following apply, you may owe household employment taxes:

1. You paid any one household employee (defined below) cash wages of $2300 or more. Cash wages include wages paid by check, money order, etc. (If any household employee was your spouse, your child under age 21, your parent, or anyone under age 18, see the line A instructions before you answer this question.)

2. You withheld federal income tax during the tax year was at the request of any household employee.

3. Did you pay total cash wages of $1,000 or more in any calendar quarter of 2020 or 2021 to all household employees? (Don’t count cash wages paid in 2020 or 2021 to your spouse, your child under age 21, or your parent.)

If you hired someone to do household work and you were able to 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. Household work is work done in or around your home. Some examples of workers who do household work are:

• Babysitters

• Caretakers

• Cleaning people

• Drivers

• Health aides

• Housekeepers

• Nannies

• Private nurses

• Yard workers

If a worker is your employee, it does not matter whether the work is full or part-time or that you hired the worker through an agency or from a list provided by an agency or association. Also, it does not matter if the wages paid are for work done hourly, daily, weekly, or by the job.

Workers who are not your employees. Workers you get from an agency are not your employees if the agency is responsible for who does the work and how it is done. Self-employed workers are also not your employees. A worker is self-employed if only he or she can control how the work is done. A self-employed worker usually provides his or her own tools and offers services to the general public in an independent business.