Where is my PH.D in Payroll?

A good friend of mine that I have known for over 30 years joined the thousands of grads this year by getting her Master’s Degree. She had a BA but decided to get her Master’s. This happy event got me to thinking maybe I should go back and get my Master’s or even a Ph.D. I have always wanted to be known as Doctor Vicki. But then the same old roadblock comes up. What would I get the degree in? When I first started out in payroll in 1977 or so I was still attending college as an undergrad. When I realized what I wanted to do with my life (I live for payroll, of course!) I encountered the fact that there were no under graduate or graduate degrees in either personnel or payroll at that time just accounting.

Well 10 years later I was able to finally get my undergraduate degree but it was in Business Administration with an emphasis in Personnel Management. And I had to go to National University to get it. I was living in San Diego at the time and San Diego State didn’t offer it. But neither school had anything that related to payroll. Now, of course, 25 years later I can go back and get a Master’s degree in Human Resources Management from Penn State or even Rutgers or San Diego State if I wanted to. I can even get a Ph.D in Human Resources from Temple University or UCLA. But where the f%$@ is my Ph.D in payroll!

Google it sometime and you will see. You can take payroll accounting courses, human resources courses, labor law courses but nothing that prepares you for payroll itself. Yet, as a payroll professional I am required to know all of the wage and hour laws not only on the federal level, but for every state in which I have one employee located. How many attorneys can say they know wage and hour law in 47 states well enough to actually pay an employee? I’ll be the answer is zippo! But there are thousands of payroll professionals who must know this information on a daily basis and do.

Payroll professionals must know all the Internal Revenue Codes that relate to paying employees including taxation of fringe benefits, withholding tax and deposit/reporting requirements. If they make a mistake—fines and penalties. Not only do they need to know it for the IRC but for every state they are located in. And not just income tax, but FUTA, and the state’s SUI plus local taxes. How many CPAs can claim they can rattle of the taxation requirements for SUI for 50 different states and the District of Columbia and are able to do the 941 in Spanish for Puerto Rico?

So where do we have to learn this? Where do the 214,000 payroll professionals working in the United States (as of 2004) learn it all? By hook or by crook. By reading IRS publications, begging for funds to take a training course or two, taking my on-line courses, attending free seminars given by the IRS or State agencies or by learning from each other.

This is no way for the number one collector of taxes and child support in the nation to be trained. Why can’t I as a payroll professional attend college, learn all about everything I need to know, take that into the real world, find out it is useless and then learn it all on the job just like all other professions such as lawyers, human resource professionals and accountants! Where is my Ph.d in Payroll!

What about you? What did you end of getting your degree in or have you not bothered since it doesn’t matter in payroll? Let’s hear from you.

Employer Social Security Credit—Whose Using and How

In May I conducted a webinar on the Form 941. As is customary attendees can submit questions in advance. One question that I received was very intriguing. The attendee wanted to know if anyone was actually claiming the Employer Social Security Credit permitted under the Hire Act. And if they were using it, how were they taking it. Was it per deposit? Or were they just going to wait and claim the entire quarterly credit on the Form 941? The attendee went on to ask if taking the credit at the end of the quarter was even permitted by the IRS.

See what I mean about intriguing. Of course the first step I took was to review the new instructions for the 941 concerning the credit. Nothing there prohibited the employer from taking it all at once but nothing said okay either. I read the FAQs and again the same thing. So the opinion I gave the attendee was simply that I didn’t see anything that prohibited the employer from taking the credit as a lump sum on the 941 instead of using it deposit by deposit.

But then the more I thought about it the more I wondered if the IRS would actually make the same interpretation if the question were put to them directly. So this morning I sent an e-mail over to the IRS and asked them about taking the credit as a lump sum on the 941. I will share their answer with you in next Thursday’s blog on reporting. I should have it back by then.

The second part of the attendees question asked how other payroll departments were handling the credit in the real world. I made a few phone calls to some payroll friends to take a quick unscientific survey. Amazingly I got the same answer from all of them. If they were using the credit they were waiting until the end of the second quarter and just claiming as a lump sum. It was not worth the time and effort to do it deposit by deposit. What surprised me a little is how many companies are not even using the credit.

So our discussion for today is simple. What are you doing in your payroll department? Are you taking the credit deposit by deposit? Are you going to wait until quarter end and do a lump sum on the 941? Or maybe your company isn’t even taking advantage of the credit. Post a comment and let us know.

Reconciling Form 941 to Forms W-2 is Definitely a Best Practice

Hey everybody I am back! Sorry to disappear so suddenly and for two weeks (in the cyber world a long time!) right after starting the blog. I would love to be able to tell you that I took an impromptu vacation to a beautiful island in the Caribbean but unfortunately that was not the case. I got laid up with a severe bout of pneumonia. Between urgent care trips, hospital stays, and sleeping for 7 days with a temperature of 103 degrees the blog, as important as it is to me, got lost in the chaos. Trust me I wish I could have done the blog instead of watching Real Housewives of New Jersey! Those ladies are CRAZY! So please accept my apology and let’s get back up and running.

We use Wednesdays for our best practices in payroll topic so today I would like to discuss reconciling the Form 941 against the W-2s quarterly. This is the best and most efficient way to ensure that your W-2s balance before final processing during year end. The reason I am picking this topic today is it seems to be on everyone’s mind with the new version of the Form 941 being released recently.

Now a lot of payroll professionals tell me they don’t do this quarterly. After all year end is 2 quarters away why reconcile now. Why not just do it when year-end gets here. But that is just the point. By reconciling each quarter you know as you go along that everything is in balance. Then at year end it’s just a quick reconcile of the 4th quarter and a submission to close out the year. This is much more efficient and definitely a better way than to sit down in January and hope it all balances. Basically it is balance now or balance later. And I hate spending all of January looking for a $4.00 difference!

What about you? What do you think?

Note: For those of you who would like more on reconciling Form 941 to Form W-2 I will be placing a white paper on my new website www.thepayrolladvisor.com by the end of this quarter. It will be available for download.

Payroll Is Human and So We Should Be

First let me apologize for missing the blog yesterday. I was working on a deadline for the Payroll Manager’s Report and just did not have time to get the blog posted. I have to be honest with you that will happen from time to time. Why? Because believe it or not even though I am a payroll professional I am also human. And as a human being I am subject to the same exhaustion after a long day, the same illnesses and the same malaise that affect all of human kind.

Why am I using today’s blog to point out that payroll professionals are human? Because sometimes, let’s face it most times, we don’t think of ourselves that way and others rarely see us that way. I mean how many of you have put your payroll before your health? I know I have on dozens of occasions. I had to have emergency surgery one time. Not life threatening just had to be done that day. But you better be sure that I dropped off the direct deposit (we had to take it to the bank in those days) and made the tax deposit on the way to the hospital. What did my husband say as he was driving me? Absolutely nothing. He had been married to a payroll person for a number of years by that time so knew better than to protest. In fact when I was in the doctor’s office the Doctor asked if I wanted to have the surgery that morning or in the afternoon. I said the afternoon, he argued for the morning until I told him I was the payroll clerk and I had to get the checks out. Then he totally understood and scheduled the surgery for that afternoon. See what I mean about how others see us. Would he have reacted the same way for accounts payable or marketing? I don’t think so.

My point is how many other professions do that when it isn’t a matter of actually life and death. Firefighters have to put the fire out or people will die, property will be destroyed. But payroll, where is the matter of life and death? Yea people want their checks and they do have to pay bills. But does the payroll clerk have to die or endanger their health for it?

I always thought that my devotion to my payroll was just me. And I have to take time out to mention that it is really only payroll people who use the term “my” when referring to their job. Pay attention some time. Most people use “the”. I have to get the checks out. But payroll people use “my”. I have to do my deposits, my garnishments, my checks, process my payroll. And I am no different. It wasn’t until I started attending APA meetings in the middle 80’s that I found out I was not different than other payroll professionals. We all seemed fanatical about getting the payroll out.

So for years I accepted as normal my reaction of utter dismay and shock when HR would take off on vacation during open enrollment. Why that’s like leaving during year end! How could they do that? Their attitude was normal for other employees. It will be covered while I am gone or will wait until I get back. But not in payroll, oh no. I, like so many other payroll professionals I know, check my processing calendar before agreeing to attend parties, schedule surgery or doctor appointments, or any other event in my life. I want to make sure it’s not on a payroll week. Oh I may still do it but I will know to work extra the day before so as to leave nothing undone. And yes, my payroll was finished before I went into labor to have my daughter 28 years ago.

But now I wonder if perhaps this is not such a good thing for payroll people to do. Do we sacrifice our efficiency if we work when ill? Do we sacrifice our careers because we don’t want anyone else doing our payroll? I am going to be returning to this topic for the next several weeks. I think it is important to discuss this as it is the very core of the profession.

So let me know what you think? Have you ever put payroll first? I bet you have.

Cranky About Benchmarking

I think Wednesdays are going to be interesting days for the blog. Best practices is an area where we can agree to disagree and maybe even be a little “cranky” sometimes. I think this is one of those “cranky” days. I am in the process of conducting a survey of 200 or so payroll professionals on benchmarking. Benchmarking is a best practice by all means and one that is very much in vogue right now. I am doing the survey for an annual benchmarking report for which I am the editor. But why am I cranky about this best practice? I am cranky because I am actually getting e-mails saying that the survey is much too long, or too much work, or a lot of trouble. You see I think some people in payroll are not getting the concept of benchmarking and best practices. It appears they think that all you have to do to benchmark your payroll department is answer a few quick questions and abra cadabera you are benchmarked!

But the survey is asking for the cost of manual checks, how long between getting new hire or termination paperwork and the payment, or how many errors occur on average in the payroll department. These are the processes that have to be benchmarked so you can determine best practices and make improvements. You have to know what goes on with every process or procedure in your department to know what needs to be improved. And it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you can say “it costs this much money to cut a manual check” or “we have three errors on average per payroll of 10k checks”. In other words it takes months of work just to determine where you stand so you can improve from there.

I guess my worry or the cause of my crankiness or angst is that there are some in payroll who still feel that just pushing paper around to pay people is good enough to run the department. That having to know the inner workings, the actual numbers, the essence of the department is too much work. And it shouldn’t be.

What do you think? Are you benchmarking?

Mileage is Mileage and Needs to Be Tracked No Matter What You Call It

Whenever I am holding an audio seminar or webinar on fringe benefits one question I can always count on deals with auto allowances. It seems that a lot of people think that because they are giving the employee the money to cover the business use of a personal vehicle that it is all nontaxable to the employee no matter how much they give them. Unfortunately, that ain’t so.

Every year the IRS sets the mileage rate. This year it is 50¢ per mile. That means that as an employer you can reimburse an employee up to that amount for every mile they drive their own car on company business. But the IRS isn’t going to take your word for it on the mileage. There must be records and logs to show the nature of the trip, the amount of miles driven etc before reimbursement can be done. Then it is number of miles driven times the current rate for mileage. Anything else is taxable income. And that’s where the disconnect seems to be with auto allowances.

Employers tend to give flat amounts to employees such as sales staff for the business use of their personal car and then drop the ball thinking that as long as it’s for mileage that should be it. But what actually has to happen is that the employee must put down all miles driven and the nature of the trip in a log. Then the total miles has to be multiplied by 50¢ for this year. That is what you can reimburse the employee. If you give a flat amount each month, you have to compare the amount you gave against the actual mileage log calculation for the same month. If it is less than the amount you gave the employee, then the employee has to give that overage back or be taxed on it.

And no it doesn’t even out over time. Once you calculate the miles in the log it goes against the month the monies were paid. For example I gave a member of the sales staff $500 for the month of June as an auto allowance. He drove, according to the log he gave me, 952 miles for business reasons. Do the math: 952 miles x $.50 = $476.00. He had to give back $24 or I have to run it through payroll. It is that simple.

Now trying to get sales people to keep the logs accurately, and turn them in on time, now there’s something that ain’t so simple!

How do you do it on your payroll?

As Long as the Check Doesn’t Bounce…

As I was going through the news updates for my website today (thepayrolladvisor.com) I came across a news item that struck a nerve for today’s blog. The item? Tennessee is now allowing employers to pay their employees via payroll card with the usual restrictions. These restrictions include no fees for one time withdrawal of all monies, etc. This news items simply adds the state to the long growing list of states that permit payroll cards as a method of payment. So what was it that caught my eye? Well, why do the states have to address this issue at all? I just have to question why each state has to address an issue that is obviously universal to all workers within this country. So therefore it should be a national law not a state by state one. All employees have to be paid, whether in Tennessee or New York. All workers have access to banks whether in Tennessee or New York. We don’t do local checking in this country anymore. We use our debit cards or credit cards or even cash as well as checking accounts. So what is wrong with having there be one law in this country on the federal level to state how employees need to be paid?

We can start off with the universal standard of “employees must be paid in cash, or by negotiable instrument payable upon demand without discount.” Then just state that payroll cards or direct deposit are included as negotiable instruments. We can add that there can be no fees if the employee is paid electronically. They have one withdrawal of all monies at no cost. No one can force an employee to have a bank account if they don’t want to or are no longer eligible. And the check has to be good. Why 50 different laws in 50 different states to have to research and worry about when one would be more efficient and more universal. And it will protect the worker in those states that don’t address the issue at all or haven’t gotten around to noticing that we are now in the 21st century when it comes to wage and hour laws and paying employees.

What do you think?