Cencast Services v. U.S

In Cencast Services v. U.S. (2004) 62 Fed.Cl. 159, the payroll company entered into arrangements with production employees and placed them with the multiple production companies to work on numerous production projects throughout the year. (Id. at p. 162.) Each week, the workers submitted their records of the hours they worked directly to the payroll company. (Ibid.) After auditing the time records to ensure compliance with industry standards, the payroll company calculated the workers' pay, subtracted the proper withholdings and then prepared and delivered a paycheck for the net amount to the workers. (Ibid.) The paychecks prepared by the payroll company were drawn on the company's accounts and paid from its own funds. (Ibid.) The Cencast court held these facts did not show the payroll company was the employer of the production workers for purposes of calculating wage bases for Federal Income Contribution Act (FICA) taxes (Social Security and Medicare) and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) taxes (unemployment). Basically, the Cencast court held the payroll company could not aggregate the wages paid to workers for the purpose of calculating how much FICA and FUTA was due; the wage bases for FICA and FUTA related to the wages paid for work performed by workers for each of the employer production companies.