Help with Social Security and medicare

[jerseygal2323]

I started working since April of 2003 (almost 18 months) for a Government Agency. I was on OPT till November,2003 and since then on my H-1B Visa.
I noticed that from my every pay check (twice a month), 9.5% is deducted for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare. Since I am on my H-1 visa and planning to return to India in a couple of years, I seriously feel this amount shoudnt have been deducted. Do I have to contact my employer or the Social Security in order to obtain the deducted amount.

The main problem is I am the first international with our organisation and my personnell manager is not very good at handling these issues.

Also, federal and state taxes withheld are 15.85% and 3.4 %. I am really not sure if these are the right % for anyone on H-1 Visa.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[ekambara]

Hi,

Your employer should withhold 6.2 % for social security and 1.45% for medicare from your salary. Employer contributes matching amount (another 6.2%+1.45%) and remits the total amount to govt. For more info, you can see page 15 of employer's tax guide in the following link.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15.pdf

You can show the above tax guide (issued by IRS) to your payroll clerck and ask him to do accordingly in future. For the excess amount that was erroneously withhold during past days, we can claim a credit while filing your tax forms.

Federal and state taxes are withhold based on the info you submitted in Form W-4 given to employer. The tax rates are not that important here.

We need to file tax forms every year and decide tax liability that time. If there was less withholding, we need to pay the balance to IRS. If there was more withholding, we can get them back as refunds.

All the best,
ekambara