Employee or independent contractor? When a court must decide how workers are to be classified, it looks at various factors. In one case, the U.S. Tax Court found that a provider of private duty nurses failed to classify 99 nurses as employees during 2016–2018. The factors considered included: the degree of control the company exercised … Read More
If your business doesn’t already have a retirement plan, now might be a good time to take the plunge. Current retirement plan rules allow for significant tax-deductible contributions. For example, if you’re self-employed and set up a SEP-IRA, you can contribute up to 20% of your self-employment earnings, with a maximum contribution of $61,000 for … Read More
According to new research, low-income taxpayers were audited by the IRS at a higher rate in fiscal 2021 than the previous year. Those who earned less than $25,000 in gross receipts were “audited at a rate five times higher” than other taxpayers, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, which received … Read More
The IRS has proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act’s family coverage and affordability rules. In a nutshell, the proposed regs would change how to determine the affordability of employer-sponsored coverage for an employee’s family. More specifically, the affordability of family coverage would be based on the employee’s share of the cost of covering the … Read More
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made great inroads into certain sectors of the U.S. economy. However, it hasn’t reached many small to midsize businesses (SMBs) in a major way … yet. In 2021, AI analysis firm Unsupervised published a survey of 520 SMB owners that found 48% of them still found AI too cost prohibitive. Forty … Read More
The magnitude of the IRS backlog of unprocessed returns is “unprecedented,” said the National Taxpayer Advocate, Erin Collins. Since the start of the pandemic, millions of taxpayers have seen their refunds delayed. To rectify the problem, Collins wants to see the IRS’s “antiquated” system modernized, including the use of scanning technology such as 2-D barcoding … Read More
Pay equity is both required by law and a sound business practice. However, providing equitable compensation to employees who perform the same or similar jobs, while accounting for differences in experience and tenure, isn’t easy. That’s why every company should at least consider undertaking a pay equity audit to assess its compensation philosophy and approach. … Read More
If your assets include foreign bank and financial accounts, you must annually file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account (FBAR). The IRS is reminding affected taxpayers that the deadline to file an FBAR generally is April 15. Specifically, taxpayers must file FBARs if they have financial interest in or signature authority over bank … Read More
In recent years, accounting rule makers have issued guidance that requires certain items on the balance sheet to be reported at “fair value.” Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about this standard of value and how it’s measured. What is fair value? Under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), fair value is “the … Read More
Bad actors, beware! As the director of the IRS’s new Office of Fraud Enforcement (OFE) explained to an American Bar Association audience, the tax agency is aggressively pursuing emerging fraud threats. For example, OFE is training IRS agents and officers to look for fraud when conducting civil audits and training some to become experts on … Read More