Retail Businesses: How to Calculate Your Payroll Costs (2026)

Managed payroll by headcount for a retail business

10 employees: $450 a month, $5,400 a year; 25 employees: $1,125 a month, $13,500 a year; 50 employees: $2,250 a month, $27,000 a year; 100 employees: $4,500 a month, $54,000 a year. Every row is $45 per employee per month, all-inclusive, inside the payroll software you already use, with no monthly minimum, so the per-employee cost is the same at 10 as at 100. Nothing in the retail business setup, high turnover and new-hire volume, multi-location payroll, seasonal overtime spikes and tipped employee tracking, is billed as an add-on.

The employer-side tax that rides on every retail business wage

At the May 2025 national median for retail salespersons, $35,410 a year or about $17 an hour, the employer share of Social Security and Medicare is $2,709 per employee per year and FUTA is $42 after the state credit, before state unemployment at the assigned rate. Those costs are the same whoever runs payroll; the calculator question is only who does the work and who carries the error.

Employees must report cash tips to the employer by the 10th of the month after the month the tips are received, and no report is required for a month in which tips are less than $20. Tips of $20 or more in a month are subject to social security and Medicare tax, and reported tips of $20 or more are also subject to FUTA.

The in-house line in the calculation

BLS OEWS May 2025: payroll and timekeeping clerks, national median $58,260, mean $59,630. Add roughly 30 percent for benefits and employer taxes, about $75,738, before the software that person runs, and set it against the headcount rows above. Managed payroll stays under that loaded figure until about 140 employees.