Laura Strombom

If you already filed your taxes and have a refund coming your way, the IRS has an online tool that allows you to check the status of your refund at any time. Where's My Refund? is available on the IRS website and eliminates the need to call the IRS to check on your refund status.

Want to learn more about the people "Behind the Numbers"? Today we'd like to introduce you to Juelie, from our Customer Service team.

Juelie claims that she "fell" into accounting after graduating as an English major. Beginning her career as an office manager, she learned more skills along the way and began to gravitate toward the financial field. She joined All About Numbers in 2008, and manages our customer service efforts. Her job involves everything from scheduling appointments with clients, to reviewing tax returns, to following up with our preparers to ensure that client's needs are being met. Juelie says she enjoys the fact that her days are "varied and never dull."

Want to learn more about the people “Behind the Numbers”? Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryan, one of our accountants who manages tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll processing for many of our clients. 

With a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from CSU, Fresno, Bryan has been at All About Numbers since 2002 and just happens to be married to our owner Laura.

If you have a family-owned business, chances are you have likely hired (or are planning to hire) an easily accessible hiring pool: members of your own family. Doing so has its pros and cons; only you know if employing those closest to you will be advantageous to your business. While we cannot tell you whether you should hire your family, we can advise you on how you need to treat them with respect to wages and specifically payroll taxes.

One of the advantages of hiring family members is the exclusion of some payroll taxes on their wages. Depending on what type of business you have (corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship) and depending on which family member you employ (child, parent, or spouse), you may not need to pay:

• Federal Unemployment taxes (FUTA)
• Social Security and Medicare taxes (FICA)
• State Unemployment Insurance (UI), Employment Training Tax (ETT), and State Disability Insurance (SDI)

The rules for each of these taxes varies, so we advise you to contact your tax preparer to ensure you are paying your family employees correctly and to ensure you are reporting wages and taxes correctly. You can then make a well thought-out decision as to whether these tax breaks will be worthwhile to you and to your family./p>

Sadly, we have become all too familiar with identity theft: someone else using your personal information without permission to commit fraud or other crimes. While most of us are familiar with “traditional” identity theft, such as someone stealing from your bank account or taking out a loan in your name, not many of us consider tax-related identity theft.

Many of my clients ask me about trusts and whether they should have one. Yes, you should! A trust protects your estate for your beneficiaries, reduces or eliminates taxes, provides for managing your estate should you be become incapable of doing so, avoids probate, avoids your will being contested, and protects the privacy of your estate (wills and probate are public proceedings.)

It seems pretty simple: Junior lives under your roof, eats your groceries, drives your car, uses your health insurance, etc. He is your dependent...or is he?

In order to qualify as a qualifying child, Junior must either be under the age of 19 on December 31 and NOT provide over half of his own support, or be under 24 at the end of the year and a ful- time student for any part of 5 calendar months during the year or be any age and totally and permanently disabled.

If Junior fails to be a dependant as a qualifying child, he may still be a qualifying relative. The biggest catch here is that Junior has to have Gross Income of less than $3800 for 2012. That equates to 462 hours at minimum wage, which is not a lot of time spent working during the year.

There are several additional tests to be passed before Junior qualifies as your dependent. The law is also clear that if you can claim Junior, Junior cannot claim himself, even if you chose not to claim him.

Please bring in the W2’s of your possible dependents with you. We will prepare their returns for free if they qualify as your dependent and for a reduced rate if they do not. Every year we amend dozens of returns because parents and kids did not get this right!

This is a challenge, as something as big as your taxes should not be left for last minute for planning. My take on the end of the year is that you should be planning now for how you can do better next year and putting the actions into place to achieve better results. However, there are some things to be aware of as the year comes to a close that will impact the current year’s taxes. The key concept to each of these ideas is timing. Timing really is everything!

Business One: “Fred” is a skilled electrician. He worked 20 years for the same company, and one day realized that he was getting paid $20 per hour but was billing $80 an hour for his time. “This is unfair!” he thought, so he decided to sit for the contractor’s license exam and open his own business. He had $10,000 saved up, and he knew that he would be able to get clients the same way his boss did very easily.

• Create a Business Plan! Have something in writing detailing your business plan. Establish goals, procedures and policies; set deadlines for reevaluating your business, etc. Meet with your financial and business advisors to make sure you’re on the right track. Ensure that you have a budget and projection, at least for your first year in business, preferably for the first two years, and consult with professionals to compare.
• Determine your business structure. What type of organization will you create? Will you operate as a sole proprietor or as a business entity (corporation, partnership, etc.). If you have set up an LLC – elect the tax reporting entity.