Payroll

The boss’s son: Employee or independent contractor?

05/09/2014

Q: Our company president’s teenage son has been hired to do what the president calls incidental work around our office this summer. He’s signed a “Professional Services Agreement,” which specifies that he will be paid $10 an hour. Payroll has been told not to put him on the payroll because he’s an independent contractor. We think he should be put on the payroll. Who’s correct?

Leasing organizations may be liable for clients’ payroll taxes

05/08/2014

The IRS can only collect payroll taxes once—either from you or your designated third party. Final regulations, which became effective March 31, 2014, clarify when employee leasing organizations are liable for their clients’ payroll taxes. Warning: Even though the regs heap liability on leasing organizations, they stress that you remain on the hook for your payroll taxes.

Regs clarify ‘risk’ for taxing noncash compensation

05/05/2014

Under tax code Section 83, you don’t tax employees who receive company stock, stock options or other property that is subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture until the risk lapses and the property vests. Final regulations issued in February, which closely follow proposed regs, clarify what counts as a substantial risk of forfeiture.

Supreme Court rules severance payments taxable

05/01/2014

The U.S. Supreme Court has resolved a split among circuit courts with a late-March ruling that employer severance payments to employees are FICA-taxable as wages. Employers must, therefore, remit their portion of Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) withholding taxes for those payments.

May 2014: Employer’s Business Tax Calendar

04/30/2014

This is your monthly guide to critical payroll due dates.

Flex funds can cover summer camp

04/29/2014

Employees who send their kids to day camp can reap a double bonus—their kids will be entertained, and they can defray some or all of those expenses through the company’s dependent care assistance plan, up to the $5,000 annual limit. For kids who aren’t nature lovers, expenses incurred for specialty camps, such as computer camps, count too.

Overlook these health plan failures at your peril

04/24/2014

If you focus strictly on the ACA health care reform law’s free-rider penalties for not providing full-time employees with health insurance, or not providing insurance that’s affordable and offers minimum value, you’re missing the bigger picture.

San Diego newspaper delivery drivers awarded $5M

04/23/2014

Workers who delivered the San Diego Union-Tribune will split a $5 million judgment against the paper’s former owner. A state judge ruled that about 1,200 carriers who worked for the paper from 2005 to 2007 were employees, not independent contractors.

Summertime … and the living ain’t easy for Payroll

04/22/2014

For Payroll, time-off complications make summer about as special as that first sunburn. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some no- or low-cost solutions that can take the sting out of summer.

Can we pay opportunity wages to a rehired employee?

04/18/2014

Q: Last March, we hired a staff member’s college freshman daughter for several weeks and we paid her the $4.25 an hour opportunity wage. We’d like to hire her again for the summer. Can we continue to pay her $4.25 an hour?