2018 Year-End Payroll Tasks & Deadlines
Hello everyone my name is Talibah Bayles and I am the Founder and CEO of TMB Tax and Financial Services.
Around this time of the year, generally we get a lot of questions from our mompreneurs regarding the year in payroll tasks and deadline dates so I wanted to put together a brief but to the point video that covers some of the highlights that we have been sharing. I really hope that you find it helpful.
This information is very relevant to you if you have employees (which would definitely include yourself) or any contractors that you have presently on payroll.
A couple of things that I wanted to touch on as it relates to running your final payroll for this year. The most important thing, of course, is you want to make sure that you have checked the direct deposit deadlines that may exist for either the payroll software that you’re using and of course your payroll software should be automatically synced to your employee’s financial institution but you just want to be hyper aware of any special direct deposit deadlines that may exist because of the holidays. It could be that the deadlines are a date or two earlier than they normally are so you want to make sure your information is submitted in time so that everyone gets paid on time.
Of course, when you’re completing your final payroll, you want to make sure that you have included all of the final payments of any fringe benefits (if you’re paying those)as well as any commissions or any employer contributions that you are paying.
Let’s start now into thinking about our first payroll in 2019. If you are in a state that has unemployment insurance and you meet the prerequisites of the number of employees required to file state unemployment insurance you want to make sure that you have double-checked your effective date of any rate changes. That is important because you’re going to have to roll that information into your payroll software if your payroll software doesn’t automatically do that. You still want to just cross check and make sure that your unemployment insurance rates are correctly updated if there was a change.
The second bullet is probably one of my biggest pet peeves over the 12 years that I’ve owned my tax company. Nothing is more frustrating to a client than for neither you,myself, my employees nor the employee to really be aware of the process of updating that W-4 for your company. You want to just get into the general practice of beginning of the year allowing your employees to review and update their W-4 to make sure number one that they are having an appropriate amount of federal and state taxes being withheld from their paychecks. You also just want to make sure that bio information is correct: you know name social security number and all of that fun stuff. Next, you want to be aware if your payroll software doesn’t give you those automatic reminders of any federal or state deposit changes when you’re going to be required to pay those quarterly payroll taxes.
Let’s dive directly into some of the upcoming dates for January and these are the days that your employees absolutely want you to get correct because they are going to be looking for their W2 so that they can go into the nearest office or to their accountant’s office to TMB Tax & Financial Services (hopefully) to file their taxes. Check out the dates on the below graphic.
Here’s another one of the common headaches that I’ve had tax clients come in over the years so I want to get directly with my CEOs here and just harp on a couple of things. Please bear with me. But when you are preparing for your final payroll and you’re preparing to issue your W2s and mailing them to the IRS please please please make sure that you have reviewed your employee’s information because that does change over time and so you want to make sure that you have the correct social security number. I can’t tell you how many times that we’ve had clients come in they get in they’re getting ready to file their taxes and they notice the Social Security number is wrong or not on the W2 or the employee’s name is filled incorrectly.
So you want to make sure CEOs that you have reviewed that information. That you have double-checked with your employee to make sure that there haven’t been any changes to that bio-data so that you know when all that information is sent in everything matches. Of course you want to make sure that you have your employees current address because if you’re not providing your W2s or 1099s electronically then you are absolutely going to have to mail copies so you want to make sure that you have that current address.
I mentioned this before you want to make sure for your final checks and certainly for your W2s that you have properly recorded all of the wage data for the year, benefits data for the year, if the employee was terminated you want to make sure that that all of the commissions,holiday bonuses – all payroll information. You want to make sure that you have done your due diligence and all the information is correct because you would be causing a headache not only to yourself but also to your employee even when they go to file their taxes. If that information is incorrect, then you’d have to do a corrected W-2 which I’m sure some people have seen whether being the boss or either being on payroll and needing to have a W-2 corrected.
I also want to talk about 1099 employees because this is definitely like a hot topic and I’ll probably do a whole second video or webinar on this because I have so many 1099 mommies (as I call them) that come in or they call and they’re just banging their head against the wall just on the process in overall. But just as CEOs I want to just highlight the basic requirement when it comes to issuing those 1099- Miscellaneous forms. Okay, if you have paid a contractor at least $600 – $600 or more – then you are required to do a 1099-Miscellaneous form okay?
Of course, that number changes. I remember back when it was four hundred and fifty dollars or five hundred dollars. Okay, but this year it is six hundred dollars so if you have paid a contractor or if you have employees that don’t consider employees in the terms of definition you consider them a contractor and you have paid them more than six hundred dollars, then you are going to be required to send over a copy of the 1099-MSC form as well as provide information to your contractor. All of that needs to be done by the 31st.
Thank you so much for watching this video. I really wanted to make sure that we all have the correct information. I am fully aware that everyone in their business may not be at the point where they can hire a professional bookkeeper or accountant and have that person on staff to do their payroll. But that absolutely does not mean that you should not be aware of the deadline dates and some tips and tricks that that we use for our clients for that year-end 2018 payroll related stuff. So I wanted to put together something and give it to you.
If you have any questions at all or want some in-depth training. Or if you’re just pulling your hair out because you know you’ve hit this you don’t know what happened and you need help with your year-end payroll, then by all means send us a direct message or reach out to us on our website or any of the social media outlets and we will get back to you.
Thank you so much!
~TMBTaxLady