JohnH

We're going to start having cake on the forum? Great! I think I'll change my vote...

I have a stack of 8109-B forms lying around, if anybody needs them...

Yes, you were correct at the outset. I just broke it down into steps to see how it comes together on the forms. I have a client who likes to see how we got to the end resullt with their Nanny. ( of course, after they say they want to cover the emplyees's withholding and all, when we get through they almost always ask "That's awfully high - isn't there something you can DO about those taxes?")

Gross pay needs to be grossed up by the amount of the FICA/Med being paid by the employer, plus the FICA/Med withholding attributable to the gross up. You can use the reciprocal as a short cut to get this (100.00% minus 5.65% = 94.35%) Divide the $700.00 by 94.35% to get gross pay ($ 741.91) Multiply $741.35 by 5.65% to get FICA W/H ($ 41.91) Net pay is back to the $700.00 target ($741.91 minus $41.91) Fed Tax Due = $98.66 ($41.91 plus $56.75) (The $56.75 is the product of $741.91 x 7.65%)

OldJack's approach is the best - he should try it first. But if he can't prove he wasn't a reponsible party, he has the possible option of paying the trust fund portion of the taxes (the amounts withheld from employee wages) if the corp is going belly up. This might enable him to avoid having to pay the matching FICA/Medicare, penalties, and interest, which is the corporation's responsiblity. This is tricky, and if he doesn't do the designation strictly according to the IRS rules, he could miss an opportunity to clean up this mess with a little less pain. If he does it incorrectly, the IRS will get the matching funds, penalties, and interest from whatever the corp has, and then STILL go after him for the trust fund taxes.

I don't really care either way, provided non-tax posts are labeled (Birthday, NT, joke, politial, etc). But I voted in favor of splitting simply for efficiency purposes.

Interesting. Democrats were still the majority in the House & Senate during the lame duck session, but blame the tea party & Republicans? Now that's a stretch. This thing could have been put to bed well in advance, even BEFORE the election, if the party in power had any backbone. They were so worried about their jobs they forgot to DO their job.

Work-around on the Uni-Form. (sort-of) ATX still hasn't responded, other than the standard reply telling me to keep updating (thanks for the suggestion, as though I didn't know that). Of course, it's still early, we're just coming off the Christmas holiday, and they are chucking out form updates hourly. Anyhow, I did find that printing the instructions in half-page layout on the back of the Uni-Form sheet puts everything on the back of the employee copy only. It takes a little trial and error to get everything in the right place the first time. Don't really want to keep doing that, but for the low-volume W-2 clients it works just fine.

I updated forms 3 or 4 times today, and it seemed to be working fine. The first one was a little slow because there were lots of forms to update, but after that it was a breeze.

Terry, that was a great video. Thanks to you and to your students for a tangible demonstration of gratitude to one of our patriots. We owe all of these young men & women a tremendous debt.

Gene: An experience like that will alter your perspective, won't it? I expect you'd agree with another of Winston Churchill's famous quips, "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."

If you use extensions strategically, the due date becomes a non-issue regardless of whether it's Apr 15 or Apr 18. I always tell my clients the last person they want working on their return in early April is a harried, sleep-deprived, cranky tax preparer. (I refuse to be one of those people). Better to take the filing date off the table entirely and get the return done without deadline pressures breathing down everybody's neck.

Between the likelihood that IRS may not make their target date and the even more likely prospect of work backlogs, this is a good year to have a firm extension strategy in place. I think I'm going to set March 10 as my cutoff date - anything coming in after that date automaticllay gets an extension. Then we can sort out what actually gets filed by Apr 15 without any undue pressure. (I've also wondered if IRS might extend the Apr 15 due date for everyone anyhow, given their own time constraints. It should be easy enough to do administratively, and they can blame Congress for the delay.)

Thanks Taxbilly. Merry Christmas to you and everyone else on this forum.

I agree that it's silly, but the rules are right there in black & white and so are the penalties. And the aggravation of giving them instructions on a separate sheet of paper is way past my patience. Better to print them on the face of the Uni-Form as it's being generated and then give each employee (or contractor) a single sheet of paper with everything right in front of them. My way of doing it is employee copy of W-2's on the Uni-Form; Copy A and W-3 on plain paper, which is also acceptable by their rules. Everything is in black & white for W-2 & W-3. Contractor copy of the 1099-MISC is also on the Uni-Form and Copy A & 1096 is on Red pre-printed forms. I have one client who issues about 200 1099's - no way I'm risking a $10,000 fine no matter how remote the possibility, when all I have to do is spend $20 for the right forms. which is added to the client's bill anyhow. To each his own...

Jack: You might want to look at Publication 1141 about printing forms on plain paper. I understand that lots of employers and preparers have been getting away with using unperforated, plain paper forms wihtout the boilerplate for years. But in this current environment, with penalties moving up the list as a source of revenue, I'd be very cautious about ignoring clear instructions. Especially when the penalty can be $50 per form if they suddenly decide to make an example of you. Peronally, I'll pay 5 cents per form to avoid the remote possibility of $50 per form - that's a good investment any day of the week. ====================================================================== .05 Employee copies of Form W-2 (Copies B, C, and 2), including those that are printed on a single sheet of paper, must be easily separated. The best method of separation is to provide perforations between the individual copies. Each copy should be easily distinguished whatever method of separation is used. Note. Perforation does not apply to printouts of copies of Forms W-2 that are furnished electronically to employees (as described in Treasury Regulations Section 31.6051–1(j)). However, these employees should be cautioned to carefully separate the copies of Form W-2. See Publication 15-A, Employer’s Supplemental Tax Guide, and new Section 3 of Part B for information on electronically furnishing Forms W-2 to employees. AND ALSO: .19 Instructions similar to those contained on the back of Copies B, C, and 2 of the official IRS Form W-2 must be provided to each employee. An employer may modify or delete instructions that do not apply to its employees. (For example, remove Railroad Retirement Tier 1 and Tier 2 compensation information for nonrailroad employees

After posting my last note, I thought of something else. I use the Uni-Form 1099MISC as well, so I checked to see if it had changed. I think it has the proper layout, with the boilerplate in the upper-right quadrant. I'm going to email tech support directly and ask about this. Will post back here when I hear from them.

I was thinking along these lines. The nice thing about the Uni-Form is that you put the blank in the printer and in a single pass you get a W-2 ready to give to the employee, plus you can buy several years' worth of blanks at one time. But if you have to run it through the printer a second time to print the boilerplate on the back, you may as well just buy 3-up perforated forms which already have the boilerplate printed on the reverse side. At first I thought Karen Lee had picked up on something, but then I looked at 2009 and 2010 side by side (thank you dual monitors), and the "Instuctions" tab appears in both years. I think it's there only for printing the back side of W-2 forms other than the Uni-Form. I posted this question on their official forum as well, just to get a clarification. There is absolutely nothing that I can find in their knowledge base to alert customers to any sort of change to the Uni-Form format. I keep hoping this is something they just haven't cleaned up yet.

H-m-m-m. Sort of defeats the purpose of the Uni-Form altogether. But if that's what we have to do, then I guess we'll have to live with it. Thanks.

So yesterday I finally broke down and ordered ATX for 2010. Program download and update this morning after I got my unlock code were a breeze and everything looks great. I entered payroll data and test printed W-2's for a client, and ran into a small snag. I use the Uni-Form format for W-2's, and all I see in the upper-right quadrant is the employee name & address, company name, and a statement saying "Attached is your 2010 W-2". All the boilerplate is missing. I searched the knowledgebase and couldn't find any info on this. Is there a preference somewhere that we need to select this year? Or is it just likely that ATX hasn't finished the Uni-Form yet since it isn't really needed for a couple of weeks?

Don't take the impersonal service too badly. Chances are the new management just wants to be sure you know who's boss. That's usually how these buyouts proceed, regardless of what industry we're talking about. Gotta dispel those old-fashioned, unrealistc expectations and whip those customers in line. We've got a bottom line to think about here...

Tums, Aspirin, Coffee, Xanax... On a more serious note, I learned of one of the most productivity-enhancing items in my office on this forum long ago - multiple monitors for my computers. Also a desk copy of either The Tax Book or Quickfinder (there are strong opinions on both sides for these two publications). Here's another accessory I find useful at times: OfficeSign.pdf

It's clear you want to use a single monitor, but here's a thought. You can do a second monitor without lots of fancy 3rd party software. It's the easiest and least-risky route since XP is already set up to handle multiple monitors. If displaying the prior year's return is your main interest, then the second monitor is primarily for reference anyhow, so it doesn't have to be as fancy as your main monitor. Any cheap monitor will do just fine for the second one.

Speaking of fans, many years ago I was at a medical device trade show where we were exhibiting a stand-alone analyzer which had some pretty fancy electronic innards. As a potential customer walked over to the booth, the president of the company (and brains behind the analyzer), stepped up to begin the demonstration. He always began by mentioning its quiet operation, and how the only sound you heard was the cooling fan. As he powered the analyzer up, the fan didn't start. Not missing a beat, he said to the customer "Looks like we have one of the new 'Solid-State Fans' in this one", as he just casually proceeded to demonstrate the analyzer.

I'd tell them to pay the tax and wait for IRS to send a bill for the interest and (if any) penalties. I might also tell them to expect the bill to be about $120 to $150. If they want to include an extra $100 in their payment, then the balance due after all the dust settles will be less by that same amount. Whatever small interest difference there may be due to not paying the precise amount with the amended return isn't worth what you'd charge them to do the exact calculation. (my answer would be the same if they owed $8,700, except I'd shift the comma. If they owed $87,000, it might be worth doing a more precise calculation)