accountant directory

Tax

What to Do If You Haven’t Filed Your 2010 Return

The failure to file a federal tax return can be costly – whether you end up owing more or missing out on a refund.

There are several reasons taxpayers don’t file their taxes. Perhaps they didn’t know they were required to file. Maybe they just kept putting it off and simply forgot.

Whatever the reason, it’s best to file the return as soon as possible. If you need help, even with a late return, we are ready to assist you.

Here are some things to consider:

  • Failure to File Penalty. If you owe taxes, a delay in filing may result in a “failure to file” penalty, also known as the “late filing” penalty, and interest charges. The longer you delay, the more these charges grow.
  • Losing Your Refund. There is no penalty for failure to file if you are due a refund. However, you cannot obtain a refund without filing a tax return. If you wait too long to file, you may risk losing the refund altogether. The deadline for claiming refunds is three years after the original due date.
  • Earned Income Tax Credit. Individuals who are entitled to the Earned Income Tax Credit must file their return to claim the credit even if they are not otherwise required to file.

Whether you must file a tax return depends on a number of factors, including your filing status, age, and gross income.

Still need to file a tax return for 2010? Call us today. We can help you file your return and avoid additional fines and penalties.

Accounting Tax

7 Tax Tips for Students with Summer Jobs

Are you a student with a summer job? Here are seven things you should know about the income you earn during the summer months.

1. All taxpayers fill out a W-4 when starting a new job. This form is used by employers to determine the amount of tax that will be withheld from your paycheck. Taxpayers with multiple summer jobs will want to make sure all their employers are withholding an adequate amount of taxes to cover their total income tax liability. To make sure your withholding is correct, call our office.

2. Whether you are working as a waiter or a camp counselor, you may receive tips as part of your summer income. All tip income you receive is taxable and is therefore subject to federal income tax.

3. Many students do odd jobs over the summer to make extra cash. If this is your situation, keep in mind that earnings you receive from self-employment are subject to income tax. This includes income from odd jobs like baby-sitting and lawn mowing.

4. If you have net earnings of $400 or more from self-employment, you also have to pay self-employment tax. (Church employee income of $108.28 or more must also pay.) This tax pays for your benefits under the Social Security system. Social Security and Medicare benefits are available to individuals who are self-employed just as they are to wage earners who have Social Security tax and Medicare tax withheld from their wages. The self-employment tax is figured on Form 1040, Schedule SE.

5. Subsistence allowances paid to ROTC students participating in advanced training are not taxable. However, active duty pay – such as pay received during summer advanced camp – is taxable.

6. Special rules apply to services you perform as a newspaper carrier or distributor. You are a direct seller and treated as self-employed for federal tax purposes if you meet the following conditions:

-You are in the business of delivering newspapers.

-All your pay for these services directly relates to sales rather than to the number of hours worked.

-You perform the delivery services under a written contract which states that you will not be treated as an employee for federal tax purposes.

7. Generally, newspaper carriers or distributors under age 18 are not subject to self-employment tax.

A summer work schedule is sometimes a patchwork of odd jobs – which makes for confusion come tax time. Contact us if you have any questions at all about income your child earned this summer season.

Technology

Getting Your Business Organized Using Google Docs

Sometimes you come across information that awakens your thought process similar to how smelling salt awakens a KO’d fighter. That’s how I felt after reading the below article on ‘Getting Your Business Organized Using Google Docs’. I am a daily user of google products, so the information in the article is not necessarily new to me, its just some of he thought processes laid out in this article are fantastic… Making it a must read.

As a person with a educational and professional background in accounting I consider myself, and am considered by others, as an organized individual; someone who helps organizations in the process of establishing systems to keep them organized. Yet this article has rearranged my thinking as to the importance of cloud computing vs traditional file folder organization.

Here are some excerpts:

…’As Merrill writes, “the root of our problem is our brain; it’s simply not designed to deal with the competing demands of our time and attention in today’s fast-paced, information-saturated, hyper-linked world.” Every day, we are all becoming more and more overwhelmed by information. So cutting through that clutter becomes increasingly important.’…

…At any given moment, your brain can hold no more than 5 to 9 items at once in short-term memory, as Merrill notes in the book. As you need more space (when multitasking) and try to remember more, your brain pushes items into long-term memory, until they are needed again. That process is far from foolproof….

…“Because of all of that back and forth, it turns out empirically that you drop more information by multitasking than you do by working on tasks independently,” Merrill says. “So not only does multitasking make you more stressed, but it makes you less effective.”…

The full article can be found here:

http://www.inc.com/guides/201105/getting-your-business-organized-with-google.html

Scroll to top