Password Protection Strategies
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn — they’ve all fallen prey to hackers who exposed passwords and other personal information for hundreds of thousands of their users. If you haven’t yet had your password stolen, chances are, it may only be a matter of time. Hearing the word “hacker” may conjure up the image of a teenaged whiz-kid up…
Keys to ‘Optimum Productivity’
Dale Siems has been a “down-to-earth” employer. No newfangled theories and consultants for him — just caring, communicating and a lot of hard work. Siems has worked at the Sherman Nursery Co., in Charles City, IA, for more than 40 years — 20 years as its president. Sherman Nursery is one of the largest wholesale nurseries…
Keep Partnerships on Course
Many not-for-profit organizations have discovered there can be strength in numbers. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of collaborations, partnerships and even full-scale mergers in the not-for-profit sector. These joint ventures can conserve resources, help with fundraising and, in many cases, expand the services that each group provides. However, a…
How “Aggregating” Businesses Can Boost Your QBI Deduction
Recently proposed IRS regulations provide aggregation rules that allow eligible individuals to “aggregate” their businesses in order to maximize the new qualified business income (QBI) deduction. Specifically, they may be able to combine income, W-2 wages and the unadjusted basis immediately after acquisition (UBIA) of qualified assets from qualified businesses conducted as pass-through entities. Here’s…
What’s Happened to My Tax-Free Transportation Fringe Benefits?
Over the years, Congress has established some nice tax breaks for transportation-related employee fringe benefits to encourage taxpayers to be more ecology-minded when commuting to work. But, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is changing the landscape for these tax-favored fringe benefits, and not in a good way for individual taxpayers. As a result,…
How Income Taxes Work
The Internal Revenue Service estimates that taxpayers and businesses spend 8.1 billion hours a year complying with tax-filing requirements. To put this into perspective, if all this work were done by a single company, it would need more than three million full-time employees and be one of the largest industries in the United States.1 Refund…
Debt Stress
American households hold an average debt of nearly $54,000, with 35% having debt in collections.¹ Little wonder that money worries are a major cause of stress. The Link between Stress and Health Humans have an innate response called “flight or fight.” It is nature’s way of launching our bodies into action; consider the physical responses…
Treasury and IRS Propose the Use of NAICS for Calculation of UBIT
GRF Nonprofit Tax Partner and Director of Nonprofit Tax, Richard J. Locastro, CPA, JD was quoted in Bloomberg Law’s August 22, 2018 Daily Tax Report on the proposed use of federal codes for nonprofits’ unrelated income. Treasury and IRS are considering the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) as an answer to exempt organizations’ concerns…
IRS Issues Proposed Guidance on Complicated QBI Deduction Rules
The IRS has finally issued eagerly awaited regulations addressing the new deduction for up to 20% of qualified business income (QBI) from pass-through entities. The QBI deduction was a major piece of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed into law last December. The deduction is available to eligible owners of pass-through entities…
Benefits Cost Employers a Bundle
The national average paid out by employers for employee benefits is 39% of total payroll costs. This figure comes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, based on a survey of nearly 400 U.S. companies of various sizes, industries and geographic locations. Here are some of the specific figures from the survey: One in 10 employers…