I run a patent law firm, and I occasionally have law students work for me part-time. I don't write enough payroll checks to justify setting up with a payroll service, but I can't just pay my students under the table or have them be 1099-contractors.
Is there a spreadsheet available that will get me adequate withholding numbers so that I can run checks myself? I've fiddled around with Excel for a bit, and I have a spreadsheet that adds up already-paid and expected-to-be-paid wages, calculates the federal tax on that amount (less deductions and allowances), then splits that up into pay-period chunks to give me the numbers for a pay stub. I figure that'll be close, but I don't know if it's close enough for government work. (Perhaps there's enough subtlety in there that the payroll companies have figured out, that make it difficult/impossible to do in a simple spreadsheet? My suspicion is that it's really not all that hard, apart from updating the tables every year.)
Thanks, dhm.