Monthly Archives: January 2020

Education, Illinois, IRS, Tips

Chicago Feb 2020 Business Education Workshops

Leave a comment

Each month the City of Chicago offers twice-weekly (Wed & Fri) FREE business education workshops presented by experts in private practice as well as representatives from various city departments. There are quite a few good ones this month — see the list below — and they’re all offered at City Hall (right downtown and near public transit). To register for any of them, email BACPoutreach@cityofchicago.org or call 312.744.2086.

City Inspections – Ask Questions, Get Answers
Wed, February 5, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St. – 8th Floor, Room 805
Presented by the City of Chicago
To operate a successful business in Chicago you need to know what it takes to maintain compliance. Officials from several City departments will provide insight on how to operate safely, stay compliant, help prepare for inspections and highlight the do’s and don’ts of operating a business.

Construction Project Management
Fri, February 7, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Street – 11th Floor, Room 1103
Presented by City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection (BACP) and Department of Planning & Development (DPD)
Working with design and construction professionals to make your business dream a reality takes smart planning and organization. Learn the best practices for establishing your schedule and budget, hiring the right professionals and dealing with unforeseen challenges to ensure your project is completed on-time and on-budget.    

NO WORKSHOP DUE TO HOLIDAY
2020-02-12

Speak Up and Speak Out: Public Speaking Training for Small Business Owners
Fri, February 14, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Street – 11th Floor, Room 1103
Presented by Michele Williams MSW, MA, Public Speaking Consultant and Columbia College Speech Instructor
You have started or plan to start your own business. You know you have something special to offer but does the rest of the world? Whether it’s giving an elevator pitch, hiring staff, giving a community lecture, talking to a loan officer, or speaking at a National Conference knowing the basics of public speaking will enhance your ability to confidently speak up and speak out. Your speaker Michele Williams has been adjunct faculty at Columbia College for over 32 years and is a public speaking consultant. She has helped over 1,000 people become more confident public speakers. Topics include: choosing topics, types of speeches, organizing the speech, dealing with fear, relaxation, non verbal communication, relating to the audience, use of language and creating new opportunities. 

How to Obtain a Sidewalk Café Permit
Wed, February 19, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St. – 8th Floor, Room 805
Presented by the City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection (BACP), Public Way Use (PWU) Unit, Anthony Bertuca
Come learn about the Sidewalk Café Permit Application process by attending this informative workshop.  We will explain the application process, inform you of all the requirements, and help you get prepared to submit an application.  The entire application process may take up to 30 days and the 2020 Sidewalk Cafés Season begins on March 1st.

Choosing the Right Legal Entity: A Small Business Entity Workshop
Fri, February 21, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Street – 11th Floor, Room 1103
Presented by Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (CLC)
As an entrepreneur starting a new business, you will be faced with many important decisions; one of the first and most important decisions will be selecting the right legal structure for your business. The legal entity you choose will impact many critical aspects of your business, such as your ability to raise capital, how your company will be managed, its tax treatment, liability protection for managers and more. At “Choosing the Right Legal Entity: A Small Business Entity Workshop”, CLC equitable development and small business attorney, Akele Parnell, will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various business structures including the Sole Proprietorship, C-Corp, S-Corp, LLC, Benefit Corporation, Cooperative Association and more.  

What You Need to Know About Your Business & Taxes
Wed, February 26, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St. – 8th Floor, Room 805
Presented by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Ladder Up
This workshop will answer important tax questions for your business including: Are you required to file a tax return? Is your worker an independent contractor or an employee? What will the IRS request during an audit? Are you required to make estimated tax payments? What resources does the IRS have for small business owners?

Digital Mindset for Growth 101
Fri, February 28, 9:30 AM – 11:30 AM
City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Street – 11th Floor, Room 1103
Presented by Grow With Google #GoogleDigitalCoaches with JinJa Birkenbeuel 
Learn how to change your mindset from analog to digital by translating your entrepreneurial dreams into online action for your brand and your business. We will give guidance on how to create goal-based strategies for your business that will help it become more “discoverable’ and recognized online so you can connect with customers. We will touch on creative branding, social media, YouTube and content strategies. Come ready with your mobile phone to work and learn!

To register for a workshop, email BACPoutreach@cityofchicago.org or call 312.744.2086.

Also, in case you weren’t aware, BACP offers a Business Start-Up Certificate Program, designed to give business owners the essential elements in starting and growing a business. Attend nine workshops at BACP and learn the essentials of business planning, financing, marketing, legal issues, technology and more. Complete the program workshops within six months and earn your certificate, as well as get free advice on your business plan. You can register for the Business Start-Up Certificate Program at any BACP workshop. Learn about the full set of BACP offerings here.

And visit their Business Video Library here.

Source: City of Chicago :: Business Education Workshop Calendar

Tips

Benefits of Outsourcing Accounting Work

1 Comment

Nice, short, to-the-point article in Accounting Web this week that I wanted to share encouraging folks to outsource their accounting function.

Accounting and finance are often among the first set of duties to be outsourced. These tasks, which require considerable attention to detail and expertise, can help businesses protect themselves from financial and legal hazards while also finding creative methods to improve their bottom line. An outsourced accountant can help your business organize (or reorganize) your books, prepare its taxes, generate long-term financial projections, establish an eCommerce platform and much more.

They illustrate how opportunity costs should factor into your decision, using a simplified example:

Suppose that your business’ accounting responsibilities require 100 hours of work per month. If you consider each hour of work to be worth $40 (or whatever number you deem fit), this means your business’ total accounting costs will amount to $4,000 per month ($48,000 per year). However, if your business could generate $50 worth of revenue for every operational hour that it gains, this means you are missing out on $5,000 per month ($60,000 per year) in positive cash flows.

They do a nice job of outlining the benefits to outsourcing as well:

  1. Cost-effective
  2. Access to expertise
  3. Access to new systems, structures & technologies

In fact, according to Deloitte, two of the most common reasons for outsourcing include improved performance (62 percent) and reduced errors (53 percent). Because only a fraction of business owners have accounting or financial experience, these functions are often among the first to be outsourced.

Source: Benefits of Outsourcing Accounting Work

IRS, Tips

IRS Confirms Tax Treatment Of Virtual Currency Charitable Donations

Leave a comment

Big news from the IRS that we’ve been waiting on for a while — how will charitable donations of virtual currency be treated for tax purposes? Forbes summarizes things for us:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued guidance for donors (and charities) on the FAQ page of its website. The IRS addressed whether gifting virtual currency to a charity could result in income, gain, or loss. The IRS confirmed that if you donate virtual currency to a charitable organization, you will not recognize income, gain, or loss from the donation. That’s the same result as giving stock or other appreciated assets, which are also characterized as capital assets.

The IRS also explained how to calculate the value of a gift of virtual currency to a charity; addressed the charity’s responsibilities for gifts of virtual currency; and reviewed charity reporting requirements to the IRS.

Also a reminder that back in 2014, the IRS clarified that virtual currency is treated as a capital asset, provided it is convertible into cash.

More here: IRS Confirms Tax Treatment Of Virtual Currency Charitable Donations – Forbes

Illinois, IRS, Tips

How to Pay Quarterly Estimated Taxes Online – IRS & IL DoR

Leave a comment

UPDATED 12/31/2021: Due to a new law, Illinois S-Corps and Partnerships should generally now pay quarterly IL state (not federal) taxes through the business, rather than personally. This post below is about how to pay IRS and IL taxes personally; here’s how to make IL business tax payments.

There are multiple options for paying personal quarterly estimated taxes. You can a) have your tax preparer create vouchers for you, that you then print and mail with a check; b) prepare your own vouchers for the IRS and IL DoR; c) pay online.

As of March 2020, federal and state agencies and the Postal Service are having so many challenges with paper-mailed checks and vouchers that we are encouraging everyone to make any tax payments online.

If you want to pay online, the easiest way to do this is to use IRS Direct Pay and IDOR MyTaxIllinois. Paying online offers confirmation that the payment made it to the agency, reducing the chance of issues down the road, especially if the check is lost in the mail or routed incorrectly in the processing department. It also allows taxpayers to be very clear about what type of tax and tax period are being submitted, again eliminating confusion on the part of the agency and preventing future problems.

If you are paying online, I recommend making payments one day before the due dates, as sometimes it takes overnight for the agencies’ systems to process payments. The funds are usually pulled from your bank account the same day or one day later, so there is very little wiggle room.

You do not have to have an account with either the IRS or IL DoR in order to make payments using these methods.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

For the IRS, once you get to the site, select the following options (noted in the screen shot below) — 1) the reason for the payment, 2) the form you would be mailing in if you weren’t doing this online, and 3) the year to which the payment should apply… for example, for 4th-quarter 2019 personal estimated taxes, you’d select the following:

Settings for IRS Direct Pay

Here’s a nice little video that walks you through the process of verifying your identity.

Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR)

For the IDOR, go to the MyTax Illinois site (if you already have an account for sales taxes or another reason — do not log in, unless you are making business tax payments), and then click the “> Make an IL-1040, IL-1040-ES, or IL-505-I payment” link (see print screen below).

image.png

Then follow the instructions for making a quarterly estimated tax payment; it will make you enter your personal information (SSN, etc.) and ask you what kind of tax payment you wish to make.

It may require you to enter your driver’s license information or your AGI from a past tax return to confirm identity and get your IL-PIN.

Then it will take you to a Payment Information page.

You’ll want to select “IL-1040 Estimated Payment” and enter your tax year. Make sure it’s for the correct year and quarter — this is very important. The example below is for the fourth quarter of 2021.

Then, enter your payment information and click the Submit button.

It will require you to enter and confirm your email address before clicking OK.

Make sure to print the confirmation screen, even though they will send you an email receipt — every once-in-a-while IDOR fails to push the request through, and the amount is not debited or recorded. If you have the print-screen, you can prove you attempted to pay it on-time and that the mistake was theirs.

It will also include a confirmation code, the date/time of the request, the reporting period and amount, and bank withdrawal information. You can click “Printable Confirmation” or just print the webpage to pdf.

Please make sure to note how much you paid to each agency and on which dates — and let your tax preparer know this information as well. Securely uploading copies of the final confirmation screen to your tax preparer or bookkeeper is a great practice, so they can easily store the info in your file.

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

IRS, QuickBooks Software, Software, Tips

For Gusto Payroll Clients – How to Distribute W-2 forms to Employees

2 Comments

If you are a Gusto payroll client, and you have employees who need their annual W-2 payroll tax forms, then the easiest way to handle it is to make sure you have entered all of their email addresses into the Gusto system under each employee’s profile. The employee will receive an automated email from Gusto asking them to create an online account. Once they have done this, they will receive notifications each time a W-2 form or paystub is available for secure download.

If for some reason your employee does not consent to online delivery, or if they do not have an email address, you can print the W-2 and give or mail it to them.

Gusto files the required federal, state and local copies of W-2 forms to the appropriate tax agencies, so you don’t need to order special paper stock in order to print and mail copies of W-2s — you can just print them on regular paper for those employees who may need it.

Gusto provides specific instructions for each of these options here.

To recap, there are three methods to issuing your employees their W-2 forms —
Method 1: Enable your employees online access to their Gusto accounts so that they can obtain their W-2 forms electronically.
Method 2: Download individual W-2s, and distribute them to specific employees.
Method 3: Print the entire W-2 PDF bundle, and distribute them to all employees.

As you probably know if you are a regular reader of my blog, I am a big fan of Gusto. They have made many improvements over the past few years, and at this point they really blow away the competition, especially with their QuickBooks Online integration. (I am not being paid to say any of this — I am simply a big fan, having spent way too many years dealing with payroll company frustrations.)

And if you are a client of mine, but aren’t using Gusto payroll yet and would like to — just let me know, or sign up here! You will receive a 15% discount, since I do not accept revenue shares.

For those of you who are not clients of mine, but are interested in using Gusto for payroll, sign up here!

And for colleagues who are interested in offering Gusto as an option to your own bookkeeping and accounting clients, let me know and I’ll introduce you to my rep, Annie Arthur — who is seriously the best.

Source: Distribute W-2 forms to employees

IRS, Tips

Tax Season 2020 Opens January 27th

Leave a comment

The Internal Revenue Service announced this week that the official opening day of the 2020 tax season for individuals will be Jan. 27, which is when the IRS starts to accept and process 2019 federal tax returns. You have until April 15 to file your return and pay your tax bill.

This year, taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $69,000 or less can use free commercial software by going to IRS.gov/freefile. Free File will open by the afternoon of Jan. 10, although taxpayers won’t actually be able to file their returns until the start of the tax season, Smith said.

Source: Tax season 2020: The IRS made it easier to file tax forms for free – The Washington Post

QuickBooks Software, Tips

Yes, QuickBooks Online is Down Right Now.

Leave a comment

Happy New Year, From Intuit!

Yes, QuickBooks Online is down right now.

I’m getting an awful lot of questions from clients about this, as well as being frustrated with it myself. So I thought now would be a good time to remind you of an old blog post (I’ve also just added this link to my Links page in the Resources section of our website so you don’t have to search the Blog for “Is QuickBooks Down” anymore).

Troubleshooting: Is QuickBooks Online Down?

Cooperatives, Education, Tips

NSAC Webinar on Internal Controls – Jan 30

Leave a comment

Wanted to give you a heads-up on a January 30th webinar offered through National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives‘ Cooperative Learning Network. (You do not have to be a member to attend.)

I took a webinar a couple of months ago through NSAC by this same presenter, Steve Dawson of Dawson Forensics. I found his style to be approachable and friendly, and the information useful and applicable to all small businesses, not just cooperatives. He even kindly took the time to speak with me afterwards when I emailed to ask for some follow-up information, and offered his time gratis to a client with a time-sensitive question. Clearly he is passionate about helping others in the field.

This upcoming 1-hour webinar (which I will also be attending) seems like something that would be useful for any small business that has grown enough that it has a need for internal controls, but does not know which ones or how to implement them — as well as for accounting and bookkeeping professionals who would like to assist their small business clients in this area. I am eager to hear actual case examples as illustrations of what went wrong and what could have been done to prevent the issues in the first place.

This session focuses on the most common types of internal fraud occurring in Cooperatives. Actual case occurrences serve as the backdrop for presenting what went wrong, the lack of or failure of internal controls, and what can be implemented now to alleviate these types of occurrences in the future.

Source: NSAC Cooperative Learning Network – Internal Controls- Closing the Barn Door before the Cows get out!

IRS, Tips

2020 W-4 Guide: How to Fill Out the New W-4 This Year

Leave a comment

The new federal tax law, which went into effect for 2018 tax returns filed in 2019, is so ridiculously difficult and complex, that our old friend the W-4 form — which is used to help W-2 employees calculate the amount of taxes that should be withheld from each paycheck — is now a giant monster that overwhelms even those of us with countless hours of continuing education on the tax code.

Luckily, my favorite payroll company, Gusto, has put together the best step-by-step guide I’ve seen on accurately filling out the new form, so you can hopefully get the correct amount withheld from each paycheck and not owe a ton of money come tax-time.

That said, even in their blog they recommend using the IRS Tax Withholding Estimator instead, because the W-4 is so arduous at this point. We’ve gone from a half-page easy-peasy form that anyone can follow, to a monster — but if you want your taxes withheld properly, you’ve simply got to do one or the other (the new W-4 or the online withholding estimator).

In any case, thanks for making this a little easier on folks, Gusto! You explained it better than I’ve been doing, anyway.

Source: 2020 W-4 Guide: How to Fill Out a W-4 This Year | Gusto