Ok so there needs some clarification here. You owe taxes in your income you earn, regardless of who your employer is or what your job is. Most people have their income taxes withheld by their employer and the employer will remit the employees taxes on behalf of the employees. This is where you prepare form W-4 and give that to your employer so they know how much you want them to withhold on your behalf.

However, they are not obligated to withhold and remit your/the employees income taxes on your behalf. In this case, you need to calculate your income taxes and remit that to the irs.

Then there’s the taxes the employer owes because they hired an employee, aka “nanny taxes”. These include fica and Medicare taxes. They are responsible for those taxes as it’s an expense part of hiring employees.

As a household employee, your employer must issue to you a Form W-2 which indicates how much they paid you for the calendar year. It’s usually issued in January. Form 1099 are for contractors and issued by the payors also in January. But the 1099 shouldn’t apply to you.

It’s very typical for employers to withhold and remit the employees income taxes on behalf of the employee because it makes it easier the employees. But it’s not a requirement.

Based on what you’ve said in your post, it sounds like they want this to be “on the table” but don’t want to remit taxes for you.

So you’ll need to figure out (estimate) what taxes you would owe for the year and submit that to the IRS. You should confirm this is what your NF intended though. Also confirm they will issue to you a W-2 because that’s not created by employees. They need to prepare that anyways if they want any tax breaks related to hiring you.