The "ADD" Accountant

Introducing Patrick Payroll

I am always wanting to give my clients more. It’s a curse, really. That being said, I am proud to share with you all the latest addition to the Patrick Accounting family of services, Patrick Payroll. As a local payroll partner, the Patrick Payroll staff will work hand-in-hand with businesses in order to implement a payroll solution that meets any and every unique need. Once in place, businesses will work with a dedicated payroll specialist throughout the payroll process to ensure continuity—reducing errors and saving time and money. We all could save a little time and money these days, right?

As part of the launch of Patrick Payroll, we have updated our advanced online client center within the Patrick Accounting website to include additional information such as new employee or changes to your employee forms, New Hire Packets, and Blank Payroll Forms.

Patrick Payroll will also provide optional services such as Pay-As-You-Go Workers Compensation, Direct Deposit Pay Cards, and Online Access to W-2s and Paystubs. To assist our very valued clients in gaining a well-rounded understanding of the additions, we will be providing a webinar to show-off these brand new features over the coming weeks.

We want to be the single source for your accounting needs, so a strategic move for us to better serve our clients was offering outsourced payroll. We want to provide maximum convenience and the best, most highly advanced technology—all your fingertips, simply and effectively.

What do you want out of your accounting firm?

the add accountant named #8 on top 100 accounting advice blog

Cool note of the day....The ADD accountant was names a top 100 accounting advice column (actually #8) by another blogger.

I will say that this may make me put more accounting stuff up here and less about the Red Sox..... na more sox.....

2010 HIRE ACT....More info to come!

Well along with the much anticipated health insurance "reform" bill that was approved, little was made of last Thursday's new small business incentive called the HIRE act....

Be rest assured we are on top of it and have already scheduled a training seminar this Friday March 26th to learn more ourselves so that we can pass on the information and help with the implementation of how it affects you in your 2010 hiring plans.....

Here are the basics....

Extension of enhanced small business expensing (Section 179). The new law gives a one-year lease on life to enhanced expensing rules, which allow qualifying businesses the option to currently deduct the cost of business machinery and equipment, instead of recovering it via depreciation over a number of years. For tax years beginning in 2010, the maximum amount that a business may expense is $250,000, and the expensing election begins to phase out when a business buys more than $800,000 of expensing-eligible assets. These dollar limits are the same as those that were in effect for 2008 and 2009.

Payroll tax holiday and up-to-$1,000 credit for employers who hire unemployed workers. To help stimulate the hiring of workers by the private sector, the new law exempts any private-sector employer that hires a worker who had been unemployed for at least 60 days from having to pay the employer's 6.2% share of the Social Security payroll tax on that employee for the remainder of 2010. A company could save a maximum of $6,621 if it hired an unemployed worker and paid that worker at least $106,800—the maximum amount of wages subject to Social Security taxes—by the end of the year. As an additional incentive, for any qualifying worker hired under this initiative that the employer keeps on payroll for a continuous 52 weeks, the employer is eligible for an additional non-refundable tax credit of up to $1,000 after the 52-week threshold is reached, to be taken on their 2011 tax return. In order to be eligible, the employee's pay in the second 26-week period must be at least 80% of the pay in the first 26-week period.

Workers hired after the date of introduction of the legislation (Feb. 3, 2010) are eligible for the payroll tax forgiveness and the retention bonus, but only wages paid after the date of the new law's enactment receive the exemption for payroll taxes.

Here are some additional features of the new hiring incentive:

• The tax benefit of the new incentive is immediate. It puts money into a business' cash flow immediately, since the tax is simply not collected in the first place.
• The tax benefit generally applies only to private-sector employment, including nonprofit organizations—public sector jobs are generally not eligible for either benefit. However, employment by a public higher education institution would qualify. 
• There is no minimum weekly number of hours that the new employee must work for the employer to be eligible, and there is no maximum on the dollar amount of payroll taxes per employer that may be forgiven.  
  
• For workers that would otherwise be eligible for the “Work Opportunity Tax Credit,” the employer must select one benefit or the other for 2010—no double dipping.
• An employer can't claim the new tax breaks for hiring family members.
• A worker who replaces another employee who performed the same job for the employer is not eligible for the benefit, unless the prior employee left the job voluntarily or for cause.
• For the hiring to qualify, the new hire must sign an affidavit, under penalties of perjury, stating that he or she has not been employed for more than 40 hours during the 60-day period ending on the date the employment begins.
• The incentive is not biased towards either low-wage or high-wage workers. Under the measure, a business saves 6.2% on both a $40,000 worker and a $90,000 worker.
• The payroll tax holiday does not apply with respect to wages paid during the first calendar quarter of 2010, but the amount by which the Social Security payroll tax would have been reduced under the payroll tax holiday provision during the fist calendar quarter is applied against the tax imposed on the employer for the second calendar quarter of 2010.
• The Act creates a similar new set of rules permitting a payroll tax holiday for railroad retirement tax purposes.
• The credit for retaining qualifying new hires is the lesser of $1,000 or 6.2% of the wages paid by the taxpayer to the retained worker during the 52-consecutive-week period. Thus, the credit for a retained worker will be $1,000 if, disregarding rounding, the retained worker's wages during the 52-consecutive-week period exceed $16,129.03. However, the credit is not available for pay not treated as wages under the Code (e.g., remuneration paid to domestic workers).
  

So as you can see, as always, the government's help comes with lots of catches, caveats, and exceptions!  As we learn more we will share and communicate what it means for you!

Thanks

Matt

Define.Communicate.Deliver!

I have been fortunate enough to spend the past two weeks working on my practice instead of in my practice.  Twice a year I go to the national conference of PASBA, or Professional Association of Small Business Accountants.  This group and likewise the conference have shaped our firm like nothing else.  I am able to bounce ideas off of great firm leaders and listen and share ideas that lead to great profitability, efficiency, and effectiveness of how we deliver the services we provide.

This year we learned a lot about the idea of creating a business that truly embodies the "E-Myth" and to create a system that works to deliver the services in an efficient documented manner.

I learned a ton and am excited about implementing as much as possible as quickly as possible.

The following week I attended a new leadership community called, Rootworks.  This was led by Darren Root.  An innovator and leader in the small accounting firm community.  I have to say how much I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of such thought provoking leadership and the ability to be exposed to the latest technologies.

My homework is extensive, but it starts with the core premise that our firm must firm must first define what we do, what we don't do, who we work with, and to whom we will not work with.

It then requires that once we know what we do, we should define what we do good and what we do great.  We would then need to define the implementation steps that would be required to take our services from good to great in each of those areas. Lastly, it would require us to determine how would we imrove the things we do great to "Next Generation Firm Status" by utilizing technology.

It was extremely powerful and I have a ton to get done!  First step, defining what we do...

I will keep you updated...

Ice Cream

Ice cream sure makes things better, huh? Do you remember being a kid and going after the game or school for ice cream? I sure do! Nothing was better than carvel and those little crunchies they had? What brings that kind of joy now? Watching my kids enjoy ice cream or pizza, or that stupid crane game where you feed quarters into it with no chance of winning, or just getting a quarter for gum...they always want a pink one....

Kindergarten

This week my oldest, Mallory, started kindergarten.  It was traumatic, but probably not as bad as it would have been if this was 1968 instead of 2008.  The fact that Mallory has been in day care since she was 6 months old and was transitioning to kindergarten with a number of her friends from Ms. Pam's 4 year old class made things easier for her.  Ya she was nervous, ya she had a new teacher, and ya she had uniforms, but other than that she was excited.  This had me thinking of her future and the start of her "real" school and how quickly this past five years has flown by.  It also had me thinking of where she was when I started the firm.

Mallory was about 9 months old when I decided to start my practice.  Yeah, that's right NINE MONTHS!!! (By the way, what was I thinking!!!)

Anyway, I often meet with other business owners and one of the things I enjoy more than anything is listening to their stories of why they decided to take that leap.  Some are continuing a family legacy, some were technically trained to be something and a business appeared around it (like a chiropractor or electrician), and some just had that "itch" to do something different than the normal 9 to 5.

The development of my firm and the path Mallory has taken are an eerie parallel.  We each have seen our fair share of ups and downs.  Crashes, bike wrecks, hirings, firings, software glitches, forgotten lunches, new clients, lost clients, new friends, new sister, new brother, old friends, teamwork, wins, and losses.  Yet, all of these have made us ready for "our" kindergarten.

The decisions, successes, and failures of one's life or one firm's life have made each of us what we are today.  My firm has seen exceptional growth just like Mallory has.  We have made poor choices (the politically correct way of saying of misbehaving), and have earned our fair share of "ice cream".

So even though we have seen success in our five years, we still have our new backpacks and lunch boxes and are ready to learn.  So as we go into Kindergarten we still have that excited feeling, still yearn to learn more about ourselves, and still look forward to more successes.

Oh, and by the way....when is P.E.?