Those with nannies--tax questions

[ryry]

We are hiring a part time nanny for part of the summer. She will be with us for six weeks, around 24 hours a week. 

I'm reading up on tax law, and it looks like since we'll be paying her more than $1000 in a quarter, we need to withhold taxes (which is fine and what we were planning on anyway!). BUT...I don't want to pay another service to do this since we'll only be paying her a little more than $2000 anyway. So if you take care of withholding taxes for your nanny on your own...is it (fairly) simple? I don't even know where to start--any suggestions on what to read to help us get started?

[sent]

I don't have a nanny. But I have a Bank of America Small Business checking account. Throught that I use their Intuit Paycheck Module. I think the first three months are free and then is like $30 a month or maybe less. I just input my employee's hourly wage, the hours worked, and it automatically calculates the deductions based on what state I live in and prepares the paycheck. You can print the check or just write a check. Then it also emails me to tell me how much I owe in taxes and that I have to pay it.

So if you can somehow open a Small Business checking account using your SSN as your tax ID, maybe you can do it for free since it's only for 6 weeks. I guess you'd have to ask at a branch.

[egishere]

I used Intuit Online payroll. You will have to set it all up - fill out some forms and get some tax id numbers. It's a little work but not horrible. Intuit will walk you through everything. A lot depends on your state too. When I lived in TX it was easy to set everything up. My new state has been more of a pain.