Wage Expense Overview, Types, Accounting Treatment

Wages Payable, or “accrued wages”, represent the unmet payment obligations owed to employees remaining at the end of a reporting period. On the balance sheet, accrued wages are recognized as a current liability since they are near-term cash outflows paid to employees that have earned the compensation, yet have not been paid yet in cash to date. The primary difference between wages expense and wages payable lies in the type of accounts that they are. Wages expense is an expense account, whereas wages payable is a current liability account. A current liability is one that the company must pay within one year.

• Many companies, and all publicly traded corporations, use the accrual basis of accounting to keep track of and record revenue and expenses.
• This is because of rounding differences between when time is entered and paid.
• Determine the wage expense and salary expense for the month of January.
• This account directly corresponds to the wages expense account.
• These deductions are made for federal income taxes, and when applicable, state and local income taxes.

Nonexempt workers must be paid overtime pay at a rate of not less than one and one-half times their regular rates of pay after 40 hours of work in a workweek. These deductions are made for federal income taxes, and when applicable, state and local income taxes. The amounts withheld are based on an employee’s earnings and designated withholding https://online-accounting.net/ allowances. Withholding allowances are usually based on the number of exemptions an employee will claim on his/her income tax return, but may be adjusted based on the employee’s estimated income tax liability. The employee is required to complete a W‐4 form authorizing the number of withholdings before the employer can process payroll.

Types of Transactions That Affect the Equity of the Company

Wage and salary are often used interchangeably but they refer to different types of payments for employment. The worker is paid per hour for a set amount of hours per week. If they go over the set amount of hours, then they are usually paid overtime. Overtime pay can sometimes be higher than the regular hourly pay; sometimes 1.5x the hourly pay. The tax consequences of compensation that’s paid to you as the business owner should be evaluated separately from the salary and wages you pay to your employees.

• The duration between the delivery of the service — the employee’s completed hours — and the date of cash payment must be kept to a minimum.
• Salary refers to a set amount of payment that does not change throughout the year and is usually quoted as an annual sum rather than hourly.
• For the last three days of the year (December 29-31) Jane earned $160.
• The tax consequences of compensation that’s paid to you as the business owner should be evaluated separately from the salary and wages you pay to your employees.
• This is also sometimes known as your base salary, and excludes any short or long-term incentives or benefits.

The term payroll is used means that the net impact of taxes, deductions, contributions, etc has been recorded in the payroll ledger account. Let’s consider that Tina earned a 1,000 USD bonus and 800 USD wages for the final week of December. The amount of taxes and contributions identified were 422.4 USD. However, the journal entry of the wages expense will only The Differences in Wages Payable & Wages Expense account for the wages payable and the bonuses payable. Most commonly, the bonuses earned in one financial period are paid in the next one. For instance, many business entities make announcements about the bonuses earned by employees at the end of a financial period and pay in the next year. Therefore, the bonuses are recorded as a part of accrued wages.

Difference between Salaries and Wages

The employer withholds income tax amounts based on the allowances designated by each employee and tax tables provided by the government. The employer pays these withheld amounts to the Internal Revenue Service .