The IRS does not send a friendly nudge before a payroll tax deposit is late. The first notice you get is the bill. Set an email reminder ahead of every deadline and follow-ups land in your inbox until the EFTPS payment is made.
Done in seconds. No sign-up required.
The penalty climbs fast, and it stacks on every late deposit you make in the year.
penalty if your deposit is 1 to 5 calendar days late
IRS Failure to Deposit Penalty (IRC §6656)
penalty once you are 16 or more calendar days late
IRS Failure to Deposit Penalty (IRC §6656)
personal liability is possible under the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty if withheld taxes go unpaid
IRC §6672 — assessed against responsible individuals
Payroll deposit deadlines do not arrive once a year. They arrive twelve times a year if you are on the monthly schedule, and roughly fifty-two times a year if you are semi-weekly. Each one is a separate transaction with its own due date. One missed deposit is enough to trigger a penalty, even if every other deposit for the year was on time.
The schedule is also moving. A Wednesday payday makes the deposit due the following Wednesday. A Saturday payday makes it due Friday. A holiday shifts the deadline. Liability above $100,000 in a single payday flips you onto the next-day rule for the rest of the year. The rules are clear, but they are also easy to lose track of when payroll runs every two weeks and you are already handling everything else the business throws at you.
The systems most business owners rely on are not built for this cadence. A calendar reminder fires once and gets dismissed. A spreadsheet does not chase you down on the day. Your payroll software might send an internal alert, but only if you log in to see it. A separate email reminder, sent days in advance and again on the deadline, is what keeps the deposit from slipping past you.
Pick the date of your next deposit, and set the reminder to recur. The first email lands a few days ahead so you can pull the numbers from payroll and queue up the EFTPS payment. A second email lands on the due date. If you have not clicked "I did it," follow-ups continue until you do.
Monthly depositors usually pick the 15th. Semi-weekly depositors set one for each Wednesday or Friday they expect to file.
Get the reminder a few days before so you can pull the figures, then a same-day email on the deadline itself.
Three follow-ups after the deadline, on the same day and the next morning. Click "I did it" and they stop.
The smaller the operation, the higher the cost of one missed deposit.
You own the EFTPS login. There is no payroll service to catch a missed deadline for you. A late deposit is automatically a penalty.
Different clients on different schedules. One missed semi-weekly deposit on one client is enough for an IRS notice. A separate reminder per client keeps the schedules from blurring together.
If your payroll provider does not file and deposit on your behalf, the deposit responsibility lives with you. An external reminder is a second pair of eyes on the deadline.
A reminder takes thirty seconds to set. Each of these costs more than that.
A deposit one day late is already 2%. Sixteen days late is 10%. The IRS does not pro-rate, and the percentages run on the full deposit, not just the late portion.
See the full penalty schedule →Monthly depositors and semi-weekly depositors run completely different calendars. Getting the schedule wrong is one of the most common penalty triggers.
Which schedule applies to you →Any single payroll that triggers $100,000 in tax liability is due the next business day, regardless of your normal schedule. Hit it once and your schedule changes for the rest of the year.
How the $100K rule works →The full breakdown of dates, schedules, penalties, and special rules.
Most employers fall under one of two schedules: monthly or semi-weekly. Monthly depositors pay by the 15th of the month following each payroll. Semi-weekly depositors pay on Wednesday for Wednesday–Friday paydays, and Friday for Saturday–Tuesday paydays. A separate $100,000 next-day rule applies once any single payday triggers that much liability.
It depends on a lookback period — the 12 months ending June 30 of the prior year. If reported employment taxes during that window were $50,000 or less, you deposit monthly. Above $50,000 puts you on the semi-weekly schedule. The IRS sends a notice each November telling you which schedule applies for the coming year.
Section 6656 of the Internal Revenue Code sets the failure-to-deposit penalty: 2% for 1–5 days late, 5% for 6–15 days, 10% for 16+ days, and 15% if the deposit is still unpaid more than 10 days after the IRS issues a notice. Interest also accrues on top.
A full-service payroll provider does file and deposit on your behalf, but the legal responsibility stays with the employer. If the provider misses a deposit, the IRS still bills the business. Many small employers run payroll in-house or use a self-service tool — in both cases the deposit deadline sits on the owner or bookkeeper, not a vendor.
A short note with the deposit type, the period it covers, and the due date. You get advance notice a few days before, a reminder on the due date, and follow-ups if you have not marked it done. Click the "I did it" button once the EFTPS payment is submitted and the follow-ups stop for that cycle.
Set them separately. State agencies (California EDD, NYS Department of Taxation, etc.) have their own schedules that do not always align with the federal 941 deadlines. Create one reminder for the federal deposit and a second one for each state filing — same email address, no extra setup.
The deposit is treated as on time if it is made by the next business day. Saturdays, Sundays, and federal legal holidays push the deadline forward. The IRS publishes a list of legal holidays in Publication 15 each year — but the safer move is to deposit on the last business day before the weekend if you can.
Free reminder email. No account, no software install. Set it once and the deadlines come to you, every monthly or semi-weekly deposit, all year.
Set My Payroll Tax Deposit ReminderLast modified: