Dear Clients and Friends:

With a new administration taking shape in our nation’s capital after the elections, you can expect that significant tax reforms will be debated, and perhaps enacted, in the near future. But the greatest impact on year-end tax planning in 2016 will likely derive from what happened late last year, not what will happen next year.

In the waning days of 2015, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act, which was promptly signed into law. This new federal legislation reinstated dozens of favorable tax provisions that had expired, many of them retroactive to the beginning of 2015. In some cases, the new law made often-extended tax breaks permanent, with certain modifications. The changes included in the PATH Act provide both individual and business taxpayers with a clearer picture about the optimal tax moves to make before the end of this year.

The Department of Labor Overtime Rule that would have required employers to pay overtime to most salaried workers who earn less than $47,476 annually, has been blocked.  Texas U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant issued a temporary injunction blocking the Department of Labor rule, which was scheduled to take effect December 1st.

Dozens of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and 21 state attorneys general, including Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, filed suit against the rules.  The litigation will likely continue beyond inauguration day. President-elect Trump is expected to either eliminate the new rule or make substantial revisions to ease the burden on businesses.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") has announced that it will release a newly revised Employment Verification Form, Form I-9 on November 22, 2016.

Employers are required to use the Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment authorization eligibility of their employees. Employers may continue using the current version of Form I-9 with a revision date of 03/08/2013 N until Jan. 21, 2017. After Jan. 21, 2017, all previous versions of Form I-9 will be invalid.

Giving you all a heads up.  When the new form becomes available we will post it on our Tax and Accounting Resources & Forms page.  

 For those of you who may not know Shannon Beach aka Team Hawk, she was instrumental in assisting in the early years when DJL had our first Golf for a Cure Outings for Leukemia/Lymphoma. As you all know Shannon, she was and still is the life of the fundraising party for such a worthy cause. I would like to ask everyone who attended those events to help Shannon and her family now. They need your help! Please tune in and read about Hawk Strong, Shannon and Roberts journey is nothing but inspirational. Leo and I will be there with them. Who else is in? I am also getting together a package for them. So anyone interested please contact me.​

Join Shannon Beach and I as we raise $ for Leukemia & Lymphoma. #teamhawk will be walking in honor of Hawk's fight at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light the Night event on Sunday, October 9th at Wade Oval at 5:00 p.m. Our team fundraising goal is $1,000.00. Click on the following link and search for #teamhawk to join the team or to make a donation. You do not have to donate to walk. A lot of fun activities for kids from 5:30-7, followed by 1 mile walk. Thanks for Marti Goodwin Jacobson for organizing our team.

http://pages.lightthenight.org/noh/Clevelnd16/teamhawk

The new mandatory payroll true-up reports for private employers were due to Ohio BWC no later than August 15, 2016. However, because there are so many businesses that missed the deadline, the BWC has extended the deadline to September 29, 2016.

If you haven't already completed your report, it is important that you get it done. The best way to complete the report is to visit the BWC website at http://www.bwc.ohio.gov and log on with your user ID and password. If you don’t have one, you will need to create one by simply following the directions located near the top right-hand corner of the BWC’s home page.  Here is a video provided by Ohio BWC that shows you exactly how to complete your true up report online.  

CORE Industrial LLC is a Women Owned multi-discipline firm with over 75 years of combined experience offering services and products in a variety of public, municipal, commercial, transportation and industrial market segments.  Their services and products include design and engineering, high-performance Abrasives, Containment Systems, Protective Paints and Coatings, Custom Steel Fabrication and Rigging Supply requirements.

The CORE Industrial team is one of our best local area assets.  Visit their website to learn more about the company or to contact them to discuss your next project.

UpUp Video is a local company providing premier aerial video and photography services to promote your business or event.  

Whether you are exploring close-quarters interior spaces or flying four-hundred feet in the air, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) offer a nearly endless range of possibilities. With their compact aircraft and cutting-edge camera-stabilization systems, they can get shots that rival, and surpass even the most advanced traditional camera rigs. Their end to end service ensures that your newly shot 4k footage gets color corrected, color graded, and edited into formats optimized for HD TV and Digital Streaming. As an added bonus, your files are backed up via cloud-based storage and are available to you 24/7 accessible from our Intranet.

Check out their video below, and visit their website at http://www.upupvideo.com.  

The Ohio Department of Taxation is alerting all businesses subject to the Commercial Activity Tax (CAT) to actions that may need to be taken before May 10, 2016 to avoid a delay in filing their 2015 CAT 12 annual return.
 
Because of enhancements to the user account profile section of the Ohio Business Gateway (Gateway), if you have not accessed your account since November 19, 2015, we urge you to log on to the Gateway as soon as possible to verify your current email address and to submit answers to three security questions before filing an annual CAT return.  That return is due May 10, 2016 and must be filed electronically through the Gateway.  For more information on how to update your account profile, please refer to the User Account Update Guide,  

Any questions, please don't hesitate to give us a call.

Get to know New Dawn Design, located here in the Mahoning Valley at 1282 Trumbull Avenue in Girard.  New Dawn produces screen printing items for companies all over the country, including many of the minor league baseball teams.  Right next door is their sister company, Launch Local Inc., that helps companies sell unused merchandise.  Check out this video.  Well done!

The Internal Revenue Service today wrapped up its annual "Dirty Dozen" list of tax scams. Taxpayers need to guard against any ploys to steal their personal information, scam them out of money or talk them into engaging in questionable behavior with their taxes.

During the past year, as part of the Security Summit initiative, the IRS partnered with states and the tax industry to enhance coordination and create a more secure system for taxpayers. Participants now regularly share details of fraudulent schemes detected so both industry and government can provide increased protection. Many enhancements are invisible to taxpayers.

Taxpayers are encouraged to review the list in a special section on IRS.gov and be on the lookout for these scams. Many of these con games peak during filing season as people prepare their tax returns or hire someone to do so. The IRS this week also renewed a consumer alert for e-mail schemes after seeing an approximate 400 percent surge in phishing and malware incidents so far this tax season. (IR-2016-28)

Here is a recap of this year's "Dirty Dozen" scams: