Comments on: $400 Stimulus Payment Dumbness Update

By: Erica Douglass

Erica Douglass — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:53:41 +0000

I haven’t seen a small business do manual payroll in years. With Quickbooks costing so little every month, most businesses just use that (even if they’re still paying invoices with checks — Quickbooks makes it super easy to pay anything with a check!)

With Quickbooks, it’s downloaded and figured automatically. You don’t have to do anything other than open Quickbooks and read a couple of dialog boxes.

-Erica

By: Twiggers

Twiggers — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:40:33 +0000

Uh oh….hubby and I both claim married….and we always owe money in April. I’m going to have to start putting some money aside for this! It would actually be awful if this credit puts me into the area where I have to do estimated taxes!!

By: Smithee

Smithee — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:12:36 +0000

No apology necessary; it takes more than one person to document the truth, most of the time.

It’s a shame about the $400/800/1600 thing. I plan to use the IRS’s withholding calculator in the next few days to make sure we don’t get a big surprise next April, like we did last year.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:27:37 +0000

Publication 15-T contains 77 pages. Sorry, I just had to look it up – online.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:17:08 +0000

And btw, my paycheck increased by $33 as well which multiplied by 24 is almost $800. This is because I file my w-4 as married. So if you and your spouse both file a W-4 form as married you will get an extra $1600 for the year. I realize this is a “short” year but you get my drift. It’s still more than $800 per couple for the remainder of 2009. How many people will not realize that until tax time? The tables in that schedule assume you are married but your spouse does not work. Nice but you will pay some of that back come tax time.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:10:51 +0000

Yes, after I said that it occurred to me that a lot of companies can access that info online now and still more businesses use payroll companies now more than ever. Although, it still surprises me how many small companies still pay their bills with handwritten checks and invoice their customers with barely typewritten bills. So I’d venture to say that the government still prints a few, but not to the cost that I had invisioned. It hasn’t been that long since I was doing a manual payroll for a small company with less than 10 employees and used the Schedule that the govt mailed to me each year prior to Jan 1. It is actually a 8-1/2 by 11 booklet (not a “simple paper form” as you put it) with every possible withholding table in it and instructions on how to use it etc. So, yes, they had to reprint a bunch of those schedules unless Obama had an inside source that put a halt to it all last October or so. But you are right, it was pennies relative to the new budget.

By: Smithee

Smithee — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:48:47 +0000

Hopefully all small businesses that aren’t fully electronic got a paper copy, or instructions for downloading a PDF, or something.

By: dwcasey

dwcasey — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:42:31 +0000

Most small businesses that aren’t fully electronic got paper copies of the new tables.

By: Flexo

Flexo — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:53:46 +0000

Employers can start whenever they like, before April 1 or after. But the tables are based on dividing the credit over April 1 through December 31, so employers who start early might credit an employee more than they should (so they’ll owe some of the credit back) and employers who start late might not credit an employee enough (so they’ll receive a larger tax refund or owe less tax when they file next year).

By: Twiggers

Twiggers — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:45:24 +0000

Hmmm….this article just reminded me about the extra money. I just checked mine and no difference (I am paid 15th and last day of each month). I thought we weren’t supposed to see this increase until after 4/1?