May 2024 Newsletter
Warren Cook
Creating small businesses success through effective Strategic HR & Business Advisory Solutions.
Resolving Tax Challenges
Tax season has ended for many, and for others you are either still working with your tax professional to provide the information to complete the tax filing process, or you filed and extension and may be waiting to complete the process later in the year.
For other taxpayers who completed the tax filing process in March and April of this year, you may now be faced with the challenge of paying your tax liability.?
Perhaps you underestimated your tax payments in the prior year.? Perhaps your tax liability was far greater than you expected due to lack of strategic tax planning or understanding of your tax obligations.? Still, you may have failed to take advantage of the myriad of strategies to lower your tax liability for your or your business.
Another possible situation was you failed to pay prior taxes and now face penalties and interest on the past due balances.
Navigating these challenges can be difficult.? It is often a wise approach to obtain and review your complete transcript with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to understand where your tax situation is and view it as the IRS does.? You also may want to consider if prior year omissions or mistakes could impact future tax liabilities.? Amending a prior return when the impact will be significantly positive for you is often worth the investment.? Determining if amending a prior year return is a big decision to make.
In many situations, based on the amount you owe, the taxpayer can simply contact the IRS directly and establish a type of installment payment agreement.? However, there are times when the balance is significant enough, is challenged by the taxpayer, or includes penalties and interest the taxpayer wishes to avoid.? In this case, engaging on your own without the skills and expertise to achieve your goal can place you in an even more challenging situation.
Insight: Before tackling these situations alone, engage your tax professional for the guidance and strategies available to mitigate risk and place you in the best tax situation possible.? Note that not all tax preparers focus on all areas of the tax world.? For example, A licensed CPA might have a practice that does accounting and tax preparation and may not provide tax planning or tax resolution services.? An Enrolled Agent who is licensed with the IRS may not enjoy tax preparation or planning and specialize in providing tax resolution solutions.? Some tax professionals focus on individual tax returns and others may be an expert in business returns.? Be sure to engage the right professional with the right credentials and the right experience in your situation to maximize the opportunity to achieve your tax and financial goals.
Flexible Work Schedules
Summer is almost here and in many places around the country school is already out.? This can often lead to employees needing and seeking a change in their work schedule to spend more time with their family or simply need to provide care when it may not be affordable or available during the hours they work.
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There are two effective strategies to consider when managing these requests to provide the life work balance the employee seeks while ensuring the needs of your organization are met.? Similarly, there are a few compliance obligations to remain aware of when making these adjustments or changes.
We share with you the two strategies below and recommend actions to take when making any change in schedule with your workforce.
Flexible work schedule – this approach is when you shift the hours on a scheduled workday.? Begin and end earlier, begin and end later, for example 9:00 am start begins at 8:00 am and the 5:00 pm end changes to 4:00 pm.? The number of hours worked each day remains the same, just when the hours are worked shifts.
When using this method of flexible for arrangement with an employee, you must first determine if there is a benefit to the business in making the change, and if there are any risks in the change such as lack of availability in delivery of services or support, etc.? Further, if your office opens for business at 9:00 am, allowing an employee to start at 8:00 am may not make any business sense other than to appease the request without being sensible to completing work for the organization.? These decisions should take the specific classification, role and duties into consideration.? For example, if the role is not public or customer facing and “when” the work gets done on a given day doesn’t matter.? Is the role FLSA Non-Exempt or Exempt.? Does the shift in hours negatively impact ability for the employee to perform the job.? Does the position require supervision meaning the people leader’s schedule might also need to shift?
Compressed work schedule – this approach alters the scheduled days and number of hours the employee works.? For example, and the most common, changing the work schedule to four ten hours days.? ??The days selected can be mutually agreed upon, and some employees or employers like developing a three-day weekend.? Other situations may reveal appreciation for a midweek break having Wednesday off.
When using this method of schedule change, like a flexible work schedule the business should be considerate in determining the benefits to the business, the ability to deliver products or services, support or availability, etc.? More frequently than the flexible work schedule change, a compressed work schedule might need to be communicated to the workforce or customers to ensure there are clear expectations of availability, and this should not be left to individual communication.
Compliance considerations – it is important that any time there are schedule changes with an employee, you document the change in a communication to the employee and personnel file.? If the change is compressed, be sure to consider state law regarding the number of hours worked in a day that qualify as overtime for a Non-Exempt employee.? If you need to update scheduled in an HRIS system, the memo is your source document to support why the change was made for tracking purposes and justification.? If you shift the days worked, be sure to understand and comply with your payroll period, which could be impacted by how you shift the schedule.
Work schedules and assignments are personnel decisions, and you need to establish a policy and procedure that is consistent, legal, and defensible.? All employees must be afforded the opportunity to make a request.? The decision must have business justification and not make any consideration based on a protected characteristic.? When a change is made, the employer’s communication to the employee should clearly state the duration of time the approval is for or clearly establish the change as permanent unless altered again by a new schedule change request.
Insight: Building a culture of life work balance that meets the needs of the business and that of the workforce isn’t always as easy as you might think.? Ensuring client or customer needs are met, the business goals and obligations, and the personal need of the workforce is a challenging balancing act left for management to work through in a consistent and compliant manner.? To balance the needs of the workforce and the business can become gray at times, and implementing practices that could create employment practice risk is real when trying to “do what is right” for the employee.
The skills and wisdom in human capital management practices can be absent in small to mid-sized organizations seeking to build a culture receptive to the needs of the workforce.? When faced with goals such as these it may be time to establish a relationship with an HR Advisor of TAHR Services to develop, implement, and manage effective flexible work programs and practices for your organization. ?To learn more and have a discussion about your employment practices contact Warren Cook at TAHR Services by scheduling a free discovery call today.