The Division’s counselors are a valuable resource to both employees and employers.  Our field counselors have prepared their schedules for the 2013-2014 travel season. The “official” travel season begins in early September and continues on through May. Field counselors try to visit as many employers as economically and physically possible. Their goal is to educate PERS and TRS members about the benefits provided to them by you, the employer.

Counselors also provide services to you, the employer, including:

• Training on benefits
• In-service training
• Classification of employees
• Amending participation agreements and other issues

To make visits as beneficial as possible to all involved, counselors need your cooperation in the following ways:

• Assist with appointment set-up for individual counseling, arrange group or job site meetings, and notify employees of dates counselors will be available at your location
• Ask your employees to prepare for counselor visits by accessing their individual account information at MyRnB
  
• Work with counselors to ensure that new employees in the Defined Contribution Retirement (DCR) Plan have adequate knowledge of their benefits and pre-arrange on-site introductory seminars for these members

If it is not possible for a counselor to physically visit a community, a counselor can provide seminars, group meetings and individual counseling via teleconference, videoconference, and the Internet.

If you have any questions regarding counselors and the services they can provide, please contact the counselor for your area.

• Counselors and their assigned areas
• Counselor travel schedule

Remember, you, as the employer, fund benefit education. Please make sure you do everything possible to ensure your employees take advantage of counselor visits. Work with your regional counselor to maximize the time they will spend with you.

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Patricia.Lightholder@ssa.gov Patty is available to answer questions concerning federal reporting including questions about Form W2 and Form 1099 corrections.

Gary.E.Petersen@irs.gov Gary is available to provide direction about specific questions and concerns, such as the reporting of independent contractor vs employee situations and taxability of fringe benefits.

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With the FSLG’s Compliance Self-Assessment Tool for government entities, you can now efficiently review all major areas of Federal tax law with which governments typically deal, and identify those where compliance issues may exist.

What can a government entity expect during a compliance check or an examination conducted by FSLG?

With the FSLG Examination Process resources page, you can find information regarding:

• Adequate record keeping
• Disclosure constraints on the IRS
• Consent by government entities authorizing the IRS to disclose tax information to third parties 

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The IRS Video Portal provides webinars on a variety of tax topics. Each recording is approximately one hour in length.

Recommended Audio Presentations

• ACA Provisions: What You Need to Know (April 30, 2012)
• Unique Employment Tax Classification issues in Government Entities (September 5, 2012)
  
• Requirements for Furnishing Form 1099-G Electronically (September 11, 2012)

Recommended Webinars

• Avoiding Information Reporting Problems for Government Entities (September 20, 2012)
• Social Security Section 218 Agreements and Government Entity Restructuring (August 8, 2012)
• Payments Made to Foreign Persons: A Basic Overview for Government Entities (May 12, 2011)
• Section 218 Tools, Tips and Compliance for Government Entities (January 27, 2011)
• Taxability of Certain Fringe Benefits for State and Local Governments gust 25, 2010)
• 1099 MISC Filing Requirements for State & Local Governments Webinar (March 30, 2010)

For information about upcoming live presentations, see the FSLG Web site.

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Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) Matching is part of a suite of internet-based, pre-filing e-services allowing “authorized payers” the opportunity to match 1099 payee information against IRS records prior to filing information returns. (An authorized payer is one who has filed forms 1099-B, 1099-DIV, 1099-INT, 1099-K, 1099-MISC, 1099-OID, or 1099-PATR with the IRS in at least one of the two past tax years.)

Matching requests may be submitted by one of the following two methods:

Interactive TIN Matching

• Accepts up to 25 payee TIN/Name combinations on-screen

Bulk TIN Matching

• Allows up to 100,000 payee TIN/Name combinations to be matched via a text file submission.

Both methods will:

• Match the payee name and TIN with IRS records;
• Decrease backup withholding and penalty notices; and
• Reduce the error rate in TIN validation.

Please see Pub 2108-A, Online Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) Matching Program for more information.

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