3 ms·

Surprised there is no one-year cliff now. Also did you have to return the pre-tax amounts or the post-tax amounts?

• joshuamorton 8y ago
  I stayed beyond one year, so idk. But I'd expect pre-tax. Obviously you wouldn't pay tax on the amount you return, so it's not really an important distinction.
  • Hydraulix989 8y ago
    Typically, the company withholds the tax for you though. I've heard stories of companies demanding the pre-tax amounts even though THEY "paid" your tax already by withholding it.
    • joshuamorton 8y ago
      That makes sense to me. The company can't unpay your taxes for you, you need to do that (and there are many options to do that, which vary from underpaying your next estimated taxes[1] to just waiting for a larger than normal refund). And if I recall, if your income increases a significant amount, you aren't penalized for underpaying estimated taxes, so there's ways to "protect" yourself (and also to not overpay). But making your taxes correct is your responsibility, not your employers. Why would your company reimburse you for taxes that you don't owe? [1]: For example, when I was interning, the "trick" was to set yourself as having some large number of dependents in the payroll tool. The tools assumed a year long employment, but as a fixed-term employee, you would owe significantly fewer taxes than the estimation. Careful massaging of the number of dependents was a knob you could turn to make your estimated taxes more in line with your actual taxes. This was, according to people I asked, legal as long as it wasn't being done fraudulently.
    • kcorbitt 8y ago
      This all gets adjusted at tax filing time. The pay I returned to Google essentially counted as "negative pay" and decreases the amount of taxable income reported for the year I returned it.