Federal jobless tax for employers expires

WASHINGTON — Nearly every private employer in the U.S. will get a tax cut on Friday, thanks to the expiration of a 35-year-old “temporary” unemployment tax.

It’s a modest tax cut — $14 a year for a company for each of its workers. But it amounts to a 25 percent cut in federal unemployment taxes, coming at a time when businesses are facing much higher state unemployment taxes. Nationally, the tax cut will save employers more than $14 billion over the next decade.

The tax was passed in1976 as a temporary measure to help pay for federal unemployment benefits in the 1970s. But like many “temporary” measures in Washington, it endured and was extended at least eight times.

President Barack Obama proposed making the tax permanent, but Congress let the tax quietly expire.