If any of the following apply, you may owe household employment taxes:

1. You paid any one household employee (defined below) cash wages of $1800 or more. Cash wages include wages paid by check, money order, etc. But do not count amounts paid to an employee who was under age 18 at any time and was a student.
2. You withheld federal income tax during the tax year was at the request of any household employee.
3. You paid total cash wages of $1000 or more in quarterly taxes to household employees.

If you hired someone to do household work and you were able to control what work he or she did and how he or she did it, you had a household employee. This is true even if you gave the employee freedom of action. What matters is that you had the right to control the details of how the work was done. Household work is work done in or around your home. Some examples of workers who do household work are:

• Babysitters
• Caretakers
• Cleaning people
• Drivers
• Health aides
• Housekeepers
• Nannies
• Private nurses
• Yard workers

If a worker is your employee, it does not matter whether the work is full or part-time or that you hired the worker through an agency or from a list provided by an agency or association. Also, it does not matter if the wages paid are for work done hourly, daily, weekly, or by the job.

Workers who are not your employees. Workers you get from an agency are not your employees if the agency is responsible for who does the work and how it is done. Self-employed workers are also not your employees. A worker is self-employed if only he or she can control how the work is done. A self-employed worker usually provides his or her own tools and offers services to the general public in an independent business.