Q: Our church is licensing our youth director as a youth pastor, which will change his status to ministerial for self-employment tax purposes. But he also does the mowing for the church, which is a nonministerial position. Do we pay him separately for the two functions, withholding and matching FICA for the mowing but not for the ministerial work?
For tax purposes, an employee can either be a minister or not; an employee cannot be both. The way to tell if an employee should be classified as a minister for tax purposes is if he or she performs ministerial duties at least 51 percent of the time. If the majority of his or her duties are ministerial, then you must classify the employee as a minister for tax purposes. If the majority of your youth pastor’s work is indeed ministerial, then the payment for mowing the lawn, for tax purposes, should be regarded the same as payment for his ministerial work.
