Pay the person who works in your home the right way.

A nanny, a caregiver for your mother, a housekeeper: if you pay one of them $3,000 or more in 2026, you are their employer, and the taxes are yours to handle. Hearth works out every payday, prints the pay stub, keeps the totals, and prepares the W-2 and Schedule H at the end of the year.

Why it matters

• When household pay goes unreported, the worker earns no Social Security credits, has no unemployment insurance when the job ends, and has no W-2 to show a landlord. An IRS research study estimated that only about 5% of the families who owed Schedule H filed it.
• Doing it properly usually costs $539 to $900 a year through a payroll service. The arithmetic for one employee is a few dozen numbers.

What Hearth does

• Every payday

  Social security and Medicare withholding, overtime for each workweek, voluntary federal and NC income tax withholding, and a pay stub to print.

• Every quarter

  The wages and tax for your NC unemployment report, and what to pay the IRS in estimated tax so April is not a surprise.

• Every January

  The W-2 and W-3 figures, line by line, and your Schedule H for your own Form 1040.

• Every deadline

  A calendar of the year's due dates you can add to your phone.

What it costs

The “Do I owe?” check and the payday calculator are free for everyone. The quarterly and year-end paperwork is $49 a year per household, for every employee you have. If that is a hardship, write to us and it is free.

Your records stay with you

Hearth runs in your browser. Your employee’s name, Social Security number and pay are saved on this device and nowhere else — we never receive them. Download a backup from Your data after each payday.

What it covers today

Federal household employment tax plus North Carolina, for the 2026 tax year; cash wages; one household. Hearth prepares the figures and the paperwork; you file and pay. Everything it does and does not do.