son had to pay taxes

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
April 11, 2025
1 reply
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son is 19, he worked for his father, single member LLC. He made a little over 25k and he said he had to pay over 1k in taxes. My thought was he would owe less or nothing. He did pay into the s.s. and medicare but not federal as per being a son in the business. Is there a certain way the w-4 or w-2 to be filled out? Did we do something wrong?

Not A Product Question

Hal_Al

Employee

The only thing you did wrong was to misunderstand how the tax system works. Any amount of wages over $14,600 will result in income tax for a 19 y.o.

$25,000 - 14,600 (standard deduction) = $10,400 taxable income. So, $1040 income tax (The first $11,600 is taxed at 10%). 19 y.o. and/or dependents are not eligible for the Earned Income Credit (EIC).

Another thing that may be confusing you is that children, under 18, who work for the family business are not subject to FICA (social security and medicare) tax. This is often mistaken to meant they're also not subject to income tax. But, since your son is 19, even the FICA exception doesn't apply.

mine6mAuthor

Now, he was underage working for his father and its single member Llc, the first 3 months were supposed to not be taxed because he was underage. How does that get put in?

Opus 17

Employee

@mine6m wrote:

Now, he was underage working for his father and its single member Llc, the first 3 months were supposed to not be taxed because he was underage. How does that get put in?

Sorry, there is no such rule or law.

Being underage, working for his parent, he is not subject to social security and medicare withholding, assuming he is being paid as a W-2 employee. But his income is always subject to income tax. There is no special exemption as you describe.

(If you think there is a state exemption, you need to look at the laws of your state. There may be a question about this in the state tax module under state-specific additions and subtractions to income.)