what is futa vs fica 
futa is a payroll tax implemented on just an employer to help fund federal unemployment programs fica is a payroll tax implemented on both the employer and employee that provides funding for medicare and social security who is subject to futa most businesses are subject to futa if they have employees if a company pays wages of more than 1 500 to employees in any calendar quarter during the year they are subject to futa in addition if one or more employees worked part of a day in 20 or more different weeks during the year the company they work for is subject to futa 1the bottom linethe federal unemployment tax act futa is only imposed on employers not employees this means that as an employee you don t have to pay this additional tax taxes collected through the federal unemployment tax act are used to fund unemployment insurance programs along with those collected by individual states 