All about Schedule H

What is a Schedule H?

IRS Schedule H (Form 1040) is used by a household employer (that’s you) to calculate and report household employment taxes. It is filed with your personal income tax return.

It’s a form that reports annual household employment federal tax liability. In a nutshell, this is a report that lists all of the taxes that a household employer owed during the year, including applicable Social Security, Medicare, federal unemployment, and federal income taxes withheld. 

Throughout the year, Poppins makes estimated tax payments on your behalf, to your SSN, using Form 1040-ES payments. Employers use the Schedule H to tell the IRS that the payments Poppins made are related to their household employer taxes. 

So, the Schedule H is the form used to explain to the IRS what the 1040-ES payments were for!

You need to report these payments to the IRS to reconcile the household employer tax liability with the household employer taxes already paid. You can give this to your CPA to file, or file it on your own!

Note: You can click here for detailed step-by-step instructions directly from the IRS on how to file your Schedule H.

If you are filing with tax software, we have resources available in the Help Center, and you can search for them using the search field located above this article!

When will my Schedule H be available and where do I find it?

Poppins prepares your Schedule H in mid to late January. We will email you when we have completed your Schedule H so you can download it. You can download your Schedule H by following these steps:

1. Log in to your Poppins account.
2. Go to the Documents area on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Select My Documents.
4. Click Download next to the Schedule H

Why is the amount different from the cover letter to line 26 on the form?

This is due to the Schedule H form rounding. We pay the actual liability, but the Schedule H rounds the numbers. The difference will generally be less than a dollar. 

What happens if I do not file my Schedule H?

You will likely receive notices from the IRS and/or Social Security Administration when they are unable to reconcile your records to those of your employee (such as the W-2 and W-3).

If you have been paying the federal taxes throughout the year, you will initially receive those funds back in a refund since the IRS will not be able to tie them to a liability, although you should not receive them back. You will need to file an amended return to include the Schedule H if you neglect to include it when you file.

What about my state payments? Why aren’t they listed?

Schedule H is a federal tax form, so it does not report state tax payments. State payments are handled differently from federal payments. State payments are not estimates and are filed quarterly with the state for your employees' benefit.

The exception is Illinois. We make estimated payments to Illinois (IL) and then provide instructions to the employer for how to report those taxes. If you are in IL, this information will be listed on the Schedule H cover letter. 

What is a credit reduction state? 

Sometimes states owe additional money to the IRS for money they borrowed from the IRS and did not pay back. If a state owes additional money, it gets passed on to the employer. They must report and pay these additional taxes when they file their Schedule H. 

For 2025, California is a credit reduction state. We explain this to CA employers on the Schedule H cover letter and tell them that they owe additional taxes; it will be $84 per employee in 2025. This means that CA employers will need to pay an additional $84 per employee when they file their personal taxes.