Posts Tagged ‘quickbooks payroll’

Congress just passed changes to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) reducing the employee Social Security tax rate by two percentage points to 4.2%. Similarly, for self-employment income for tax years beginning in 2011, the Act reduces the Social Security tax rate under the Self Employment Contributions Act (SECA) tax by two percentage points to 10.4% percent. (Act Sec. 601)

If you are an employer, all your employees will receive a 2% increase in their paychecks on wages paid in 2011. This will cost you, the employer, nothing but there are some potential bookkeeping hassles.

As a result, for 2011, employees will pay only 4.2% Social Security tax on wages up to $106,800 and self-employment individuals will pay only 10.4% Social Security self-employment taxes on self-employment income up to $106,800. The maximum savings for 2011 will be $2,136 (2% of $106,800) per taxpayer. If both spouses earn at least as much as the wage base, the maximum savings will be $4,272.

If you use a software package like QuickBooks to do your payroll, you may have to manually override the employee portion of the Social Security if the software update is not available by the time you pay your first wages in 2011. If you are one of the many small business who manually calculate payroll, you will have a few extra steps to figure the amount of your payroll tax deposits.

Intuit Payroll has added a new check-signing feature in QuickBooks to make issuing checks more efficient. Instead of signing each check, you can now scan your signature once, save the image, and then use it in QuickBooks when you print checks on your preprinted check stock.

The signature works for all check transaction types, including paychecks, liability checks, bill payment checks, sales tax payment checks, and standard banking checks. You can print your signature on both voucher checks (one to a page) and non-voucher checks (three to a page). Note: The signature will not work on wallet-sized checks.

Source : QuickBooks Payroll Bulletin, September 2009, Editor: Lise Quintana

Projects that are publicly funded typically require the contractor to pay a prevailing wage rate for workers on the job. Then, for each payroll period, the contractor must create a Certified Payroll Report that shows the wages paid to each worker.

QuickBooks 2009 and 2010 include a new Certified Payroll Report in Excel. You can use this feature to compile the information needed for the U.S. Department of Labor’s WH-347 and WH-348 forms required for Davis-Bacon Act payroll certification compliance.

The federal government allows businesses to use substitute formats for these Certified Payroll filings. The reports produced in QuickBooks contain all of the required information on the WH-347 and WH-348. You can then print and sign the Excel-based reports just as you would the standard forms.

Source : QuickBooks Payroll Bulletin, September 2009, Editor:Lise Quintana