IRS

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service reminds small businesses that recent tax reform legislation lowered the backup withholding tax rate to 24 percent and the withholding rate that usually applies to bonuses and other supplemental wages to 22 percent. The agency also urges employers to...

Although the April filing deadline has passed, scam artists remain hard at work, and the IRS urges taxpayers to be on the lookout for a summer surge of evolving phishing emails and telephone scams. The IRS is seeing signs of two new variations of tax-related scams....

Social Security taxes or contributions are collected under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and the Self-Employment Contributions Act (SECA). Many people refer to contributions to Social Security as either FICA or SECA taxes. While FICA and SECA may sound similar, they are just two different ways for the government...

The Economic Mobility Act of 2019 would repeal section 512(a)(7), which imposes a 21 percent tax on expenses incurred by tax-exempt organizations for providing transportation benefits to their employees. The bill was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee on June 20. While there...

When someone legally changes their name, there are tax consequences they need to know about, especially at tax time. People change their names for several reasons: Taking their spouse’s last name after a marriage Hyphenating their last name with their spouse’s after getting married ...

The Self-Employment Taxes that most members of the Clergy must pay quarterly are actually made up of two different taxes: Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (also known as “OASDI” or the more commonly used term “Social Security”) Medicare taxes   OASDI taxes are calculated as 12.4% of...

The Freedom from Religion Foundation, or FFRF, has decided not to pursue an additional challenge of the clergy housing allowance at the Supreme Court level. This means that clergy housing and parsonage allowance provisions will likely remain in place for tax year 2019 and beyond. For...

When a church hires an employee, one of the initial decisions that must be made is whether to treat the worker as clergy, non-clergy employee or contractor. This decision may seem insignificant, but it has huge implications when it comes to payroll. Ministers have what is...

The Affordable Care Act (also called ACA, federal health care reform or sometimes “Obamacare”) expands health coverage to millions of previously uninsured Americans and makes significant changes to health insurance practices nationwide. The Health Insurance Marketplace is an online resource for comparing different plans and benefits...