Wise consultants have years of experience completing year-end planning, balancing cumulative data, producing W-2’s, auditing quarterly & annual tax returns, and more to make certain that our clients have a smooth end of the year. Below, our consultants discuss our recommendations for tax auditing, reconciling, and navigating remote worker tax laws to avoid costly mistakes.

Tax Auditing and Year-End: Do Your Own Quarterly Reconciliations!

During the annual reconciliation period, payroll and HR professionals are hard at work reviewing wage reports and balancing data sets in order to support the submission of withholding and unemployment returns and other required filings for various agencies. Our recommendation for staying organized and accurate during your year-end reconciliation initiatives? Do your own quarterly reconciliations. This way, you know what to expect when you review your returns from your vendors. 

If you need help completing your reconciliations amid another abnormal, COVID-affected year, the Wise team developed a custom 941 tracking assistant to help you stay organized and accurate around the changing COVID-relief rules. We constantly update our tracking assistant as regulations surrounding payroll tax and reconciliation requirements change. Our consultants can also step in and help you make sense of the seemingly endless year-end tasks, even if you have never done any reconciliations.

Remote Worker Tax Changes & Complications

It’s no secret that the rate at which companies are normalizing a remote or hybrid workforce is increasing. Turnover is also high within key industries. At Wise, we consult with hundreds of companies of differing sizes across industries. This makes it easy for us to jump in and help with payroll tax no matter how big your company is or which industry-specific considerations you are facing.

Some states have payroll regulations that conflict with each other. If your remote employee moves states without telling you, you’ll be withholding taxes for their previous residence and not their new residence; if the new state in which they reside has different tax laws, you’ll be putting yourself at legal risk and making your business susceptible to hefty penalties. 

While the ‘new’ location-liberated workforce has changed the way employers handle many day-to-day aspects of work and brings quite a few benefits to the employee experience, worker location changes need to be tracked correctly in order to protect employers from risk. It is the employer’s responsibility to know where every member of their workforce resides, as it has a very real impact due to differing payroll tax state laws and regulations. Where an employee performs work is what matters when considering payroll tax withholding, and can impact the employer’s alignment with the law. Creating new policies for the new situation is a necessity. For starters, you are allowed to require employees to sign remote-work agreements, limit work-from-home, or require them to declare where they are working. It’s up to you to have this important information in hand before you complete your year-end work!

Get Year-End Support from Wise

We’re always watching payroll tax developments on behalf of our clients, but we’re especially keen on vigilance about compliance as year-end approaches. If you are looking for a solid team of certified, detail-oriented payroll professionals who know year-end requirements like the back of their hands, call us at Wise Consulting: 800-654-4550. We’ve got you covered!