Blog & Newsroom

The IRS announced that the Modernized e-File (MeF) will be unavailable for brief periods during July and August during scheduled system upgrades. The outages will occur as follows:

National Taxpayer Advocate (NAS) Nina Olson, who is scheduled to retire on July 31^st, 2019, addressed Congress for the 37^th and presumably last time in her role. Olson, who has held the role of NAS for 18 years, addressed Congress to review the 2019 tax season and the state of the IRS.

Under a new provision created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), for the tax years 2018 and 2019 you may qualify for a tax credit if you set up or amend a paid-family leave program. Under Section 45S of the Internal Revenue Code, employers that voluntarily offer qualifying employees up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave annually under a written policy, may claim the credit.

Using a contractor can be an attractive option that allows you to scale hours up or down as needed. This can be significantly cheaper too, since you do not have to provide them with benefits or vacations. But before you pull the trigger on utilizing an independent contractor, you should know that the IRS takes intentional misclassification of contractors very seriously. The IRS understands the financial incentives to using 1099 contractors and they know the temptation exists to classify a worker as a contractor when you truly view and treat them as an employee.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has announced the IRS will be issuing additional guidance on the taxation of cryptocurrencies, also referred to as virtual currencies.

The Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) has announced a proposal to provide Ohio employers with a $1.5B rebate.  This rebate comes as the result of stronger than expected returns on investments.

Well…it’s over.  This year’s individual tax return filing deadline has come and gone.  As the dust settles and we take stock of this year’s tax season, a few trends have appeared.

The IRS recently announced a 6 year plan to update and modernize its information technology systems and infrastructure. The move will bring much needed resources to an agency beleaguered by nearly a decade of consecutive budget cuts. 

As the responsible party on employer identification number (EIN) applications, effective May 13, 2019, the IRS will only accept EIN applications from individual taxpayers who have either a Social Security number or individual taxpayer identification number.

On Friday, March 22, 2019, the Treasury and IRS announced they have lowered the withholding underpayment penalty threshold to 80%. This means that taxpayers who were 80% or less under-withheld on their income tax withholding or quarterly tax payments may qualify for relief.