I’m a bookkeeper that got a promotion to handling the finances of a small company due to health concerns of my former manager during the pandemic and my department shrunk from a few of us to just me, only recently getting someone else to help out with collections/receivables. Because of the reduction in workforce I usually set up things for autopay/filing and forget about them. A couple of years ago we switched payroll systems and I thought I set up the taxes to auto file/pay. Fast forward to this month, Owner is getting a divorce so I needed to go through our books and found out that the payroll taxes weren’t being deducted. There’s no reason that I shouldn’t have noticed the money not being deducted every pay period but I guess it didn’t register it that we always had more cash flow than expected. The taxes owed are 6 figures and we barely have the cash flow to cover the payroll we’ve been paying let alone cover the full payroll cost and I’m freaking out because I feel like I’ve screwed over the owners royally and I’m also worried if I’m looking at jail or fines for criminal negligence or something of that nature.
If anyone can help with 1. What punishment I’m looking at and how to protect myself without further messing up things for the company
2. Any advice on how to get out of this hole that I can hopefully present or explore
Thank you for your help.
Location: Austin,Tx