Payroll

Cloud accounting application Xero announced new partnerships today with personal bill tracking application Manilla and web hosting company Squarespace. The company’s announcement comes close after the December launch of Xero Payroll, the announcement of the product’s support for file attachments, and integrations with non-traditional lending sources like Kabbage and FundBox.

Now is a great time to sort out any anomalies that could complicate year-end and W-2 processing. And two of the most common are overpayments and repayments.

The new health insurance laws still have many individuals and small business owners scratching their heads. In an effort to help those in North Carolina, Tim Robinson, CPA, tax director at the CPA Firm of Hughes Pittman & Gupton, LLP, in the Raleigh-Durham area, recently spoke to financial executives on compliance with the Affordable Care Act. He discussed several tax penalties that will affect Triangle businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees.

Most U.S. taxpayers must secure health insurance coverage this year whether they want to or not. But the IRS and Treasury Department have clarified several exceptions to the rules in new proposed regulations relating to the health insurance mandate for individuals.

It was the best of payroll processing times, it was the worst...well, you get the idea. Payroll used to be complex and tedious work, so much that many accounting firms stopped offering the service.

Those who paid regular employees or used a contractor for more than $600 in work have until Jan. 31, 2014, to provide the appropriate wage and income reporting form – a W-2 or 1099-MISC – to all recipients. For those who procrastinate, sorting through the various IRS reporting requirements at the last minute can make a tight deadline even more stressful.

Thomson Reuters has released a special retrospective report focused on the key tax developments that occurred during 2013, which included a major federal tax law as well as many significant new cases, regulations, rulings, and revenue procedures.

Small businesses are hiring, and employment at smaller firms grew in Illinois and Indiana last month.