Pay someone to work in your home — a nanny, housekeeper, in-home caregiver for an aging parent, private chef, or gardener — and the tax code makes you an employer. The obligation is personal, not a business expense: it rides on Schedule H attached to your own Form 1040, never on a Schedule C, because the labor produces no business income to deduct it against. This is the “nanny tax,” and it is one of the most widely ignored rules in the code — right up until a divorce, a workers’-comp claim, or a cabinet nomination turns it into a headline.