Tax payment guide for dummies?

[ri-ny]

Hi everyone,

I own a small business in NY and we are currently using a full-service online payroll provider. Our needs have changed though and it's now overkill for what we do, and I'm thinking about switching to PayWindow to save quite a bit of money.

I installed the software and everything looks great. What I'm looking for though is a sort of idiot's guide to the tax payment & filing requirements. Something that tells you when each type of payment or form filing is due, where in PayWindow to find the amount or form required, and then how to get it done. My current payroll service includes a "to do list" which prompts me when any actions are required; I don't mind setting my own calendar reminders, but I'm not sure exactly what to do.

For example: looking in my tax history from the past year, I see the following payments:


Federal Taxes (941/944) - paid monthly
Federal Unemployment (940) - paid annually
NYS Employment Taxes - paid quarterly


and the following form filings:


941 - filed quarterly
940 - filed annually
NYS-45 - filed quarterly


(not counting 1099s, W2s, etc.)

I'm looking for a guide that says something like:


Every month: click here in PayWindow to see the 941 amount. Make this payment using eftps.
Every quarter: click here in PayWindow to see the 941 summary info. Submit form 941 to the IRS. (How?)
Every quarter: click here in PayWindow to see the NYS-45 amount. Make this payment at www.tax.ny.gov.
Every year: ...


I know some of this will change based on the size of the business and other factors. Does anything like this already exist though?

[Paul Mayer]

See this page in the Help File as it shows the two most important reports you need to print each pay day. The Employer Totals report shows your tax payments to pay:

http://zpay.com/pw-online-help/TheTwoMostImportantReports.htm

The help fie also shows how to print the 941 Form and others too.

[ri-ny]

Ok thanks. Looking through the 941 instructions, there are indeed several variations, and it would be nice to have a to-do module to remind you when each payment & filing is due. I recognize this would be a lot of work though, especially with all of the state-specific requirements.

I have a simpler suggestion too: the default naming convention for the generated PDFs is Form[_Q]_YYYY_Company.pdf. If you changed the format to Company_Form_YYYY[_Q].pdf, the sort order would be much better. So when someone says "send me all of your 941s for company X for last year" they'd be right next to each other in the folder. The current ordering makes it fairly difficult to find things in a large directory, as shown by the screenshot in the helpfile.

Thanks again, I'm going to keep playing with this and hopefully make a final decision before this year's first payroll!