Zig Software Foundation 2025 Financial Report and Fundraiser

I know literally nothing about business accounting or business taxes. Why does the expenses include both the employee's compensation and also their taxes? Do businesses claim their employees taxes as expenses?

Very cool to see such a detailed report about finances.

Hello, I am the author of the post.

The expenses listed here are accounting for 100% of the expenses paid by the organization. If you go fetch the 990 from the IRS and look at the totals, it will match dollar-for-dollar, cent-for-cent. So if I deleted taxes from this report, you would hopefully all be wondering, where did that $13,089.07 go?

Happy to answer any other questions.

Edit: I see the question is about income tax vs payroll tax categorization. As this isn't my area of expertise and it's getting late, I'll wait until tomorrow to check carefully and make any necessary clarifications.

Been awhile since I employed anyone in America (that whole "we're going to annex you" thing) but if I had to hazard a guess, it's the company's portion of their FICA taxes? The company withholds the employee portion to remit to the IRS, then matches it dollar to dollar. If the company is structured so that Andrew is self-employed, it'd be SECA instead and you can count that portion as a business expense.

i think the question is more of "is that payroll/employment tax"? the way it's written uses the word "income tax" carefully noting the distinction. you may want to edit it to say "payroll tax", which makes more sense.

At a very high level, revenues enter your bank account and expenses leave your bank account. In this case, you are getting confused about the taxes. There is employee compensation (which the business will withhold taxes on behalf of the individual) and then payroll taxes (which the employee is not responsible for). In essence, "their taxes" is not the correct classification. The business pays the employee (and facilitates the tax collection) and also pays the tax the business owes.

I think I understand from the other comments. I never considered that it is technically an expense to withhold the income taxes of employees and then pay it to the IRS.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that number is not actually employee income tax, even though the report seems to suggest the same. Employee income tax is an expense of the employee, not the employer. If it is income tax withholding, it's way too small for $150k+ of employee comp, which is another reason I don't think it's that. Instead, I expect this tax line item to be primarily the employer share of FICA tax, which is typically considered a payroll tax instead of an income tax.

In the USA at least, the employee pays taxes on their wages and the employer, also pays some taxes on the employee wages as well.

there is still payroll tax on top of that though, snd c3s are not exempt

Is that a US thing only? Because this sounds like double taxation. An employee have to pay Income tax, which is normal and standard across the globe, but employer also have to pay another "income tax" for its employees on top of pensions, medicals and others ?

It's not an income tax, it's a payroll tax. and there is nothing in general saying you can't double-tax. plenty of double taxes in the us.