IRS guidance on how exactly to implement the White House's payroll tax deferral, part of the president's executive orders meant to bypass Congress on pandemic aid, has yet to come, meaning that the deferral is unlikely to be implemented anytime in the near future, as companies won't move until they get further clarification on how this is all supposed to work, said Accounting Today. Businesses can't implement the deferral until they update their payroll processing software, at the very least, but they can't do that until the IRS provides guidance. Accounting Today added that companies are also wary of moving in on a benefit without clear guidance, as many have felt burned by later clarifications of the Paycheck Protection program (PPP) loan implementation, leading some to return the money after concluding the terms weren't to their benefit after all. The White House would prefer that businesses go ahead and implement the deferral anyway, although it conceded that it cannot force companies to do so.

The idea of a payroll tax cut has been met with some skepticism from even traditional Republican allies, who convinced the administration to abandon such measures in its legislative package, not least of which because of its potential impacts to Social Security. That the White House executive order is a deferral instead of a cut was likely due to the fact that only Congress can actually make a cut. When first discussing the idea, though, the administration hinted it would make the cut permanent if still in control of the White House after the election. A recent analysis from Chief Actuary Stephen Goss noted that eliminating the payroll tax would mean that the program would run out of disability funds by the middle of next year, and run out of old-age and survivor funds by 2023, said MarketWatch.

The White House has announced that it didn't really mean cutting or getting rid of the payroll tax earlier, saying that it was only referring to forgiving the deferral, despite earlier statements explicitly referencing a cut.