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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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The taxpayer is paying their federal taxes. The money is being withheld on their behalf. They are receiving a W2 stating their earnings and withholding. Their employer is properly filing, but they are not sending the money they claim to owe.
If your employer does all this, the IRS can't blame you for not paying your taxes. You have proof that you did. The IRS can't sue all of the company's employees for the company's failure to pay. They have to go after the company, not you.
They could even do it legally. If the state won a case saying the federal government illegally withheld Medicaid funds from the state and its citizens, the state could get an order to seize federal assets, including employee withholding from state workers.
Thanks, it's good to know that it wouldn't fall on the employee. I looked it up[1] and you're right -- if your employer withheld the money and you can prove it (either via the W2, or by producing your paycheck stubs showing the amounts withheld if there's no W2), then the Feds will go after the employer, not the employee.
I also learned that if your employer didn't pay the feds and/or give you or the Feds a W2, then it falls on you to prove they withheld money by showing the IRS your paycheck stubs (or by managing to get that info from the employer), otherwise you will still have to pay the taxes. So the lesson there is to save your paycheck stubs (or electronic copies thereof), especially the last one of the year showing the totals, just in case!
So, back on the topic of States trying to keep that money from going to the Feds, my previous argument would still apply, except that the employers would be held liable by the Feds instead of the individual employees, under current laws (AFAIK!). So if the State passed a law saying the companies have to give that money to them instead of the IRS, the companies would be in a catch-22 situation of Fed law saying Feds get it and State law saying the State gets it. So again, Fed law would supersede the State law and companies would have to give the money to the Feds.
Do you know a way the States could get around that issue? It would be great if they could but I don't see how.
[1] https://www.taxaudit.com/tax-audit-blog/2025/what-happens-if-my-employer-doesn-t-pay-my-payroll-taxes
They can't get around it for private employers, but state and local governments are employers and perform withholding.
The state could also enact a job placement program, and function as a temp agency: the worker is the employee of the temp agency, not the client company they are contracted to.
Those are good ideas, though the court costs of fighting Fed lawsuits might outweigh the amount garnered. And/or the Feds would retaliate by withholding other fed money owed to the state (like it's already doing in some cases! Like the medicaid money for Minnesota, etc).