September 4, 2020 - Bloomberg Law News is reporting confirmation from the IRS that the Employee Payroll Tax Deferral is optional.
According to the copyrighted article (subscription required), IRS Attorney Kelly Morrison-Lee said during the IRS monthly payroll industry teleconference, "Employers may, but are not required, to utilize the relief."
The article also says the attorney confirmed that employers have the choice of whether to implement or not, rather than employees, and employers are not obligated to implement the deferral.
This information appears to agree with the official statement issued earlier by the IRS. Although the earlier public guidance document was not entirely clear on the question of whether the deferral was optional, it did address the deferral as a delay in the due date of the payment of the taxes by the employer to the IRS, and confirmed that without further action, the taxes would be due in the first quarter 2021, leading to a host of questions as to how it could be implemented by employers.
We cannot independently verify this information, but wanted to pass it along to you as Bloomberg Law is a reliable source of information. Thanks to Paul Truber, UHY, for alerting us to this article.