Payroll

Deposits can’t be directed to payroll or corporate accounts

04/27/2012

The IRS keeps track of your company’s tax liabilities as separate modules in its Business Master File. If, say, your corporate income tax module is short, the IRS can offset that shortfall with an overdeposit from your payroll module. Worse: The IRS can make these offsets without telling you.

Throw a bucket of ice water on summer payroll problems

04/27/2012

As you gear up for employees’ summer vacation requests, remember that the FLSA has a lot to say about working hours, calculating overtime when employees take a day off during the week, and uniform policies. Here’s help navigating these choppy waters.

After accident in company car, can we recover insurance deductible using payroll deductions?

04/24/2012

Q. We have a fleet of company cars. If an employee is at fault in an accident, is it legal for us to require reimbursement for the $500 deductible by reducing his pay over a period of three or four pay cycles?

May is direct deposit month

04/24/2012

To encourage employees to sign up for checkless paydays, the federal government declared May direct deposit month. As government declarations go, it’s been a success—most employees do have their pay deposited directly into their bank accounts. Most isn’t all, however.

Picnic payroll problems … more bothersome than ants

04/23/2012

Forget the overdone hamburgers and warm soda. Payroll problems can arise even around the most hallowed of institutions, the annual company picnic.

If you hire your kids, be the boss, not the parent

04/17/2012

It’s almost summer, and some lucky kids will be working in their families’ businesses. Sole proprietors and partnerships where both spouses are partners can get some special payroll tax breaks for hiring their kids. But, regardless of your business structure, you must follow a few rules to keep the IRS out of your hair.

IRS reclassification program: more questions than answers

04/13/2012

Under the IRS’ Voluntary Classification Settlement Program (VCSP), you may change workers’ status from independent contractors to employees for future tax periods on favorable tax terms, without incurring penalties or interest. Now, however, new questions have arisen. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

Free but taxable? Frequent-flier miles raise questions at IRS

04/12/2012

It’s a frequently recurring headache for employers and the IRS: Determining whether the value of frequent-flier miles employees accumulate when they travel on business is a tax-free fringe benefit or taxable compensation. Share this latest guidance with your colleagues in the payroll department.

April showers and Form 941: Wow, it must be spring!

04/03/2012

April is the cruelest month not because it rains buckets, but because it’s time to file your first-quarter Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return. Here’s help for Payroll:

CPA’s claim crashes, owes body shop’s payroll taxes

04/02/2012

A federal trial court has ruled that an auto body shop’s inside CPA/controller was personally responsible for 100% of its unpaid payroll taxes. It was enough, the court said, that the CPA had some authority over the company’s finances; exclusive authority wasn’t necessary.