Avoid Payroll Pitfalls: Four Tax Tips For Small Businesses (NAPSA)}—Tax season needn't be a challenging time for America’s 5.1 million small businesses. It may bring numerouspayroll responsibilities and potential headaches, but four tips can help small businesses better control payroll: 1. Stay on Top of Payroll Withholding Tax Changes Tax rates can change at any time. For example in 2003, all federal withholding tax rates changed to support the nationwide mid-year tax cut. Without reliable tax rate updates, many small businessescalculate taxes incorrectly, leading to potential penalties, and collecting back taxes from employees. While tax agencies post updated withholding tax rates, the easiest way to get current tax rates is prob- ably through your accounting software'’s payroll tax table service, or to use an online self-service payroll such as www.paycycle.com, which automatically updates its users’ tax rates, with 100 percent accuracy guaranteed. 2. Don’t Forget That Unemployment Taxes Can Change Too In 2004, roughly 20 states are changing unemployment tax rates or the wage base subject to unemploymenttax. Accurate paychecks address only half your responsibility. You also need to correctly calculate employeronly taxes, such as unemployment taxes. Complete solutions, such as PayCycle’s, calculate both employee and employer taxes to ensure you have your entire payroll under control. 3. File Your Forms Like individual taxes, you not only need to pay taxes, but also need to file payroll tax forms. Plus, some states require multiple filings quarterly and annually, and forms often change. Small businesses can file federal Create Paychecks Bie Weekly Payroll Pay Period: Jo1/10/2004 -01/17/: Pay Name Regular V K.Lau Salaried MV A.Long 40.0 VV A.Sanghvi 32.0 Memo: [Great Work Team! O 5 @ You may be able to makelife easier and avoid payroll pitfalls by signing up for an easy and lowcost online payroll solution. tax forms electronically (www.irs.gov/efile) and many states offer e-filing options. Alternatively, choose an in-house or outsourced payroll solution that files federal and state forms—either electronically or with pre-filled “signature ready” forms. 4. Stop Worrying: Do Payroll Online Online self-service payroll can makeit easier and less expensive for small businesses to stay in control and avoid headaches. The service offers instant, guaranteed accurate paycheck calculations, direct deposit, electronic tax payments, electronic tax filings, W-2s, detailed reports and toll-free access to pay- roll experts. You can integrate pay- roll data with QuickBooks’, QuickBooks Online, Quicken’ and Microsoft’ Money and neverre-enter it again; stay ahead of deadlines with automatic e-mail reminders. Your data is stored on secure servers, so you can even do your payroll from the road, home or office. For more information on PayCycle, visit www.paycycle.com.
