With new silliness in the tax code comes new silliness in how employers are required to report said silliness to their employees and the IRS. And unfortunately the BBB was chock full of silliness that businesses now have to keep track of. Some of this the various payroll processors will handle pretty well but some of it will be up to accountants/bookkeepers to manage. Some hightlights:

• Qualified OT is defined as OT required by federal law in FLSA, so 1.5x for time over 40 hours. Specifically OT required by states with more generous rules or by union contracts is not eligible for the OT deduction. That's significant in at least a few states that require OT on a daily basis. For example in California anything over 8 hours is 1-1/2 and anything over 12 in a day is double time. None of that matters for the deduction which I think means employers will have to track OT two different ways.
• Qualified tips nonsense led to the creation of a new series of occupations that receive tips. This actually came out in September but this is the first I've seen it. Each employee will have to be assigned a three digit code. But, wait! There's more.
• Tips paid by the customer voluntarily can be deducted by the employee but tips that aren't not negotiable cannot be deducted. THAT MEANS if work at a restaurant that has a mandatory 18% for large parties or a floor of xx% those are not qualified. THAT MEAN a restaurant that has someone working "regular tables" and large groups in any given day will have some times that are qualified and some that aren't. What a ****ing disaster.
• Employers will have to indicate of W2 that they are a Specific Service Trade or Business on the W2. I guess they aren't capable of tying the NAICS on the company return to the EIN on the W2. Workers in SSTBs are no eligible for the tips deduction. Examples of SSTB's include accounting, health, law, actuarial science, athletics, brokerage services, consulting, financial services and the performing arts.
• There's a new W4 with a line dedicated to qualified tips as part of the Deductions Worksheet.

What a ****ing disaster. Now at least we know how they'll control for abuse at least with regard to tips. I assumed NAICS codes would be the filter but, oh no! There's a whole new list of codes employees have to use.

flown-the-coop said:

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So in return for no tax you have to do a bit of record keeping?

Seems the opposite of silly. Seems like they actually through about how to limit FWA with these new tax breaks.

If you think its to silly to fiddle with, I am sure the treasury will welcome your additional payments.

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I don't give two ****s about the taxpayer here. There's an army of software and accounting professionals that are ultimately responsible for implementing and maintaining this stupidity. None of them are tipped, by the way.

And of course someone has to pay all of their wages.

No, someone else has to change a bunch of software and someone else has to do a lot more record keeping.

flown-the-coop said:

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Trump gives tax cuts and people ***** and moan they have to do work to update their payroll systems, most of which are outsourced and most of them are all prepared.

Yawn.

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Spoken like someone that's never actually been responsible for any of this. Probably a good time to stop while you're behind. I promise the payroll software industry collectively spent millions of dollars coding these changes. Now that that's done the army of bookkeepers that use those "outsourced" systems get to add all the changes necessary to make the reporting work correctly.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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No, someone else has to change a bunch of software and someone else has to do a lot more record keeping.

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And we're actively reducing them to the point where we're losing revenue from tax cheats just because the IRS is scary.

flown-the-coop said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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Trump gives tax cuts and people ***** and moan they have to do work to update their payroll systems, most of which are outsourced and most of them are all prepared.

Yawn.

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Spoken like someone that's never actually been responsible for any of this. Probably a good time to stop while you're behind. I promise the payroll software industry collectively spent millions of dollars coding these changes. Now that that's done the army of bookkeepers that use those "outsourced" systems get to add all the changes necessary to make the reporting work correctly.

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Yea, I've paid payroll for 15 years, been through 3 payroll vendors over that time and never fretted about tax code changes causing extra work for accounting.

I also am a CPA. Yawn.

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So you understand the massive waste of man hours and don't care. Ok. If your firm processes payroll for small businesses think about the time you or they will have to spend adding that code to each of their employees, or at least the ones in key industries. It's just such a colossal waste of time and money.

TDS-B is real

I do and I get it. Been a long day defending Trump's honor and I was a bit terse here.

There is a track record of Team Trump complicating the implementation of his policies. Trump 1.0 TCJA and some other measures added some complexities as well.

My apologies for being contrarian here. You have a valid point, though I don't think it's a huge endeavor, I can see where it is also unnecessary frustration.

flown-the-coop said:

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I do and I get it. Been a long day defending Trump's honor and I was a bit terse here.

There is a track record of Team Trump complicating the implementation of his policies. Trump 1.0 TCJA and some other measures added some complexities as well.

My apologies for being contrarian here. You have a valid point, though I don't think it's a huge endeavor, I can see where it is also unnecessary frustration.

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That's fair and I appreciate it. For me this was a reminder that Trump is an Old School Democrat. Old as in 2005. lol which reminds us how far that party has moved in a scant 20 years. I like a ton of what he's done but this was bad policy and the implementation had to be complex, not sure there was another outcome. At a time when we could desperately use a simpler tax code this went the opposite direction.

Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

When they are complex and easily gamed. Lower the lowest tax rates if you want to help working families. It helps them all and it is as simple as it gets

Fundamentally, why should a working family bringing home $40k per year from an hourly wage job pay more in tax than someone working the same hours that brings home $40k but a large portion is tips? It's nonsensical

I'd add that one of our fundamental issues is that we have far too much of the population that pays $0 tax. No skin in the game at all. This will increase that. Exclude tips from being taxed then apply the standard deduction against what's left, you're going to see a lot of service industry folks now paying at least something move to the pay nothing category, all while some non-serve industry families with the same gross are still paying.

Two B's or not 2 B's.

That is the question.

captkirk said:

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Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

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Since when is buying votes with your money a good thing? That's literally all this is. Trump used your money to buy votes from waiters. That's awful policy and a terrible way to run a country.

captkirk said:

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Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

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For a lot of those people they'll now have to pay for tax help at tax time where, before, they just filled **** out themselves.

I'm sure a lot of palms in congress were greased by tax attorneys and their lobby.

Build Back Better 2 isn't/wasn't what it was cracked up to be.

flown-the-coop said:

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Trump gives tax cuts and people ***** and moan they have to do work to update their payroll systems, most of which are outsourced and most of them are all prepared.

Yawn.

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I guess we should just stick with the party that raises taxes non stop but makes the reporting simple...

BigRobSA said:

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captkirk said:

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Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

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For a lot of those people they'll now have to pay for tax help at tax time where, before, they just filled **** out themselves.

I'm sure a lot of palms in congress were greased by tax attorneys and their lobby.

Build Back Better 2 isn't/wasn't what it was cracked up to be.

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If you save $2,500 but it costs $250 for tax help, that seems like a win for everyone.

That said, our tax filing system, code and lack of assistance from the IRS on their own complexity is a *******ization that should be ended. I fully support a low, flat tax rate or a consumption tax.

Just pointing out that the benefits here outweigh the costs, though it could be done better.

flown-the-coop said:

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BigRobSA said:

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captkirk said:

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Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

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For a lot of those people they'll now have to pay for tax help at tax time where, before, they just filled **** out themselves.

I'm sure a lot of palms in congress were greased by tax attorneys and their lobby.

Build Back Better 2 isn't/wasn't what it was cracked up to be.

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If you save $2,500 but it costs $250 for tax help, that seems like a win for everyone.

That said, our tax filing system, code and lack of assistance from the IRS on their own complexity is a *******ization that should be ended. I fully support a low, flat tax rate or a consumption tax.

Just pointing out that the benefits here outweigh the costs, though it could be done better.

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Assuming this exact situation....you don't know you're "ahead" until you fork out the money. And then, it still takes a while to gt the money. For some, even with the quicker refund methods, that's not a feasible risk.

BTW, I'll possibly benefit from this change as I've worked a metric **** ton of OT this year. I still think it's horribly done, as all govt seems to do is **** up a wet dream.

Trying to get the concept of BigRob and wet dreams out of my head now. Thanks.

I get what you are saying. And as I said the tax code should be where 99% of taxpayers can file for themselves. And EVERYONE should be a tax payer. I don't care if it's a minimum $100 per person, but everyone must pay something.

LOYAL AG said:

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captkirk said:

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Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

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Since when is buying votes with your money a good thing? That's literally all this is. Trump used your money to buy votes from waiters. That's awful policy and a terrible way to run a country.

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He raised my taxes? I missed that. In fact he stopped the largest tax increase ever proposed.

captkirk said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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captkirk said:

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Since when are tax cuts for working families nonsense?

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Since when is buying votes with your money a good thing? That's literally all this is. Trump used your money to buy votes from waiters. That's awful policy and a terrible way to run a country.

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He raised my taxes? I missed that. In fact he stopped the largest tax increase ever proposed.

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Yep. Financed by more inflation from ever growing deficit spending. Dear God some of you can't see the forest for the trees. In a decade we've gone from sub-2% to 9+% thanks to his and Biden's Covid spending to now being told 3% is acceptable and we should cut rates. So yeah our tax bills stayed low while our inflation will go up. Yay us.

Not believing any of yall are accountants until you start posting in all cap letters.