True. My apologies for any confusion in the nomenclature. The term “payroll tax” is often used to describe any and all taxes that are withheld and show up on an employee’s pay statement. I use the term — and I believe professionals in finance use it — to describe only those taxes that are applied to employee pay and matched by employers. Your employer matches the Social Security and FICA taxes you pay. Your employer withholds income taxes from your paycheck and sends that money to the IRS, but it doesn’t match any of it.
Interesting. I am by no means a CPA, but have worked as a bookkeeper for many years. I always understood the term “payroll taxes” to describe the taxes the employER has to pay as a cost of having an employee. That would be social security, medicare, federal unemployment tax and state unemployment tax. But I guess from the employee perspective federal (and state) income taxes would be considered payroll taxes.