Author: Debra Watkins

Form 944 – Am I Eligible?

To file Form 944, Employer’s Annual Federal Tax Return,  you must be notified by the IRS that you are eligible to file Form 944.    If you estimate that your annual payroll tax liability for 2012 will be $1,000 or less and would like to file Form 944 instead of quarterly Forms 941, now is the time to contact the IRS to request to file Form 944.

To File Form 944 for calendar year 2012, you must call the IRS at 1-800-829-4933 by April 2, 2012, or send a written request postmarked by March 15, 2012.  The IRS will send you a written notice that your filing requirement has been changed to Form 944.  If you do not receive this notice, you must file quarterly Forms 941 for calendar year 2012.

 New employers are also eligible to file Form 944 if they will meet the eligibility requirements. New employers filing Form SS-4, Application for Employer Identification Number, must complete line 13 of Form SS-4 indicating the highest number of employees expected in the next 12 months and must check the box on line 14 to indicate whether they expect to have $1,000 or less in employment tax liability for the calendar year and would like to file Form 944.

Generally, if you pay $4,000 or less in wages subject to social security and Medicare taxes and federal income tax withholding, you are likely to pay $1,000 or less in employment taxes. New employers are advised of their employment tax filing requirement when they are issued their EIN.

Written requests to file Form 944 should be sent to: Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Ogden, UT 84201-0038 or Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Cincinnati, OH 45999-0038.

Wikipedia vs Wikileaks

During tax prep time, a client was aghast that her husband had given money to Wikipedia since that was the organization that leaked confidential information.

These two organizations are not the same thing.  From Wikipedia:

WikiLeaks is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.

WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers.

I think that as often as we all use Wikipedia, we should support The Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimedia Foundation Fundraises to Keep Wikipedia Going: Accounting Today.

The Best Pizza?

Midway through an article in the CPA  Practice Advisor  on the best websites for tax season is a fun discussion:

Domino’s Pizza (www.dominospizza.com). You can pretend that you don’t order pizzas during tax season, but no one will believe you. That’s why Dominos made this list. Technically, most pizza lovers give Papa John’s a higher rating for taste, but that chain’s website and online ordering systems are a disaster. Pizza Hut is a close contender, with an excellent online order system and great pizzas. But the difference that puts Dominos at the top of our list is the “Pizza Tracker” feature that allows you to know within minutes when your pizza will be delivered. That, combined with economy and selection, put this at the top of the delivery list if not the flavor list.

More Pizza:

Sausage Maker’s Trade Secret Was Not a Capital Gain

 

Green Bean Casserole

According to the report, the foods include a 16-pound turkey, a gallon of milk, a 30-ounce can of pumpkin pie mix, a half pint of whipped cream, 14 oz. of cubed stuffing, a pound of green beans, 12 rolls, three pounds of sweet potatoes, 12 ounces of fresh cranberries, 2 pie shells, a 1-pound relish tray (carrots and celery) and various other ingredients.

Read more: The Ten Foods Making Thanksgiving Much More Expensive – 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2011/11/10/the-eleven-foods-making-thanksgiving-more-expensive-this-year/#ixzz1di2XbAao

 

How about Mama Stamberg’s  cranberry relish?

 

Who Owes the Sales Tax?

Senators Introduce Online Sales Tax Bill with Bipartisan Support.

The sales tax collected in Texas is in fact a sales and use tax.  When consumers purchase items online and no sales tax is paid, the purchaser is supposed to remit the tax to the state.  Form 01-156 Texas Use Tax Return  should be filed with a payment on or before the 20th day following the period  (month or year) during which items subject to use tax are brought into Texas.  For example, if you purchase a Kindle from Amazon.com, no sales tax is collected.  Your responsibility is to remit the tax.

Why do some online vendors collect sales tax and other’s don’t?

A fancy word for the reason is nexus.  Nexus is a connection and in the sales tax world, that means if a company has a connection to Texas, usually a physical connection, that company is required to collect sales tax.  Amazon.com closed a Dallas distribution center to avoid collecting sales tax  on sales delivered in Texas.

This ability to disregard sales tax on sales creates an advantage for online stores over Main Street stores.  The legislation introduced, referenced above, by a bipartisan group of 10 senators attempts to level that field.  Amazon does support the legislation.

 

Super committee: Let Bush tax cuts expire and your work will be done – CSMonitor.com

Super committee: Let Bush tax cuts expire and your work will be done – CSMonitor.com.

President Obama extended the Bush tax cuts through December 2012.  These tax cuts are costing the Treasury $11.6 million dollars PER HOUR.  The alternative view is that tax dollars are taxpayer dollars, not government dollars, and we need to cut spending.

However:

A record number of Americans — 49.1 million — are poor, based on a new census measure that for the first time takes into account rising medical costs and other expenses.

The numbers released Monday are part of a first-ever supplemental poverty measure aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty. Although considered experimental, they promise to stir fresh debate over Social Security, Medicare and programs to help the poor as a congressional supercommittee nears a Nov. 23 deadline to make more than $1 trillion in cuts to the federal budget.  (Washington Post)

Bombs, Bridges and Jobs – NYTimes.com

 

Bombs, Bridges and Jobs – NYTimes.com.- Paul Krugman

First things first: Military spending does create jobs when the economy is depressed. Indeed, much of the evidence that Keynesian economics works comes from tracking the effects of past military buildups. Some liberals dislike this conclusion, but economics isn’t a morality play: spending on things you don’t like is still spending, and more spending would create more jobs.

But why would anyone prefer spending on destruction to spending on construction, prefer building weapons to building bridges?

John Maynard Keynes himself offered a partial answer 75 years ago, when he noted a curious “preference for wholly ‘wasteful’ forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.” Indeed. Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, “Solyndra! Waste!” Spend money on a weapons system we don’t need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition.

To deal with this preference, Keynes whimsically suggested burying bottles full of cash in disused mines and letting the private sector dig them back up. In the same vein, I recently suggested that a fake threat of alien invasion, requiring vast anti-alien spending, might be just the thing to get the economy moving again.