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Issue Number:  2018-10

Inside This Issue

1. Plan now to use health flexible spending arrangements in 2019
2. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: A comparison for businesses
3. Upcoming IRS webinars for tax and payroll professionals rounding out 2018
4. National Tax Security Awareness Week
5. Technical guidance
6. New forms, instructions and publications on IRS.gov

Flexible spending arrangements (FSAs) provide employees a way to use tax-free dollars to pay medical expenses not covered by other health plans.

Interested employees wishing to contribute during the new year must decide how much to contribute through payroll deductions before the plan year begins. They have to do this again for 2019, even if they contributed in 2018. Self-employed individuals are not eligible.

Also, under the use-or-lose provision, participating employees often must incur eligible expenses by the end of the plan year or forfeit any unspent amounts.

Please share this important FSA information news release with your employees, partners and  interested stakeholders.

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changed deductions, depreciation, expensing, tax credits and other items that affect businesses. The IRS created a new resource on IRS.gov showing a side-by-side comparison to help businesses understand the changes and plan accordingly. This resource is also available in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian and Vietnamese.

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Please help spread the word about upcoming year-end IRS webinars geared to tax and payroll professionals. These webinars are free but require registration. Most offer continuing education credits. They cover these topics:

• Tax reform basics about opportunity zones – Nov. 29
• Employment tax updates and reminders – Dec. 4
• Tax reform basics about qualified business income deductions (199A)
  – Dec. 6
• Tax reform basics about due diligence requirements – Dec. 13

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December 3-7 is the third annual National Tax Security Awareness Week. It will feature events nationwide, highlight a daily security topic and mark the launch of a special @IRSTaxSecurity Twitter handle to keep the public aware of emerging threats throughout the 2019 tax filing season.

To kick off this campaign, the IRS is offering a free webinar to help taxpayers understand the Dark Web and how it is used as a repository for stolen identities, credit data, tax information and banking/financial information.

This webinar will be held at 2 p.m. EST on Monday, Dec. 3, 2018. To register, go to Tax Security Awareness: Understanding the Dark Web.

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• Notice 2018-83 provides details about cost-of-living adjustments affecting dollar limitations for pension plans and other retirement-related items for tax year 2019.
  
  
• Notice 2018-84 explains how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Section 151 reduced personal exemption deductions. Taxpayers who may be eligible for the premium credit, or who may have to pay the shared responsibility payment, should determine how this reduction to zero may change their current status. The notice also announces that Treasury and the IRS intend to amend regulations to clarify this issue. The guidance in this notice applies until further guidance is issued on the topic.
  
  
• Revenue Procedure 2018-57 provides inflation-adjusted items for 2019 for various provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of 1086 as amended as of November 15, 2018 including the tax rate tables.

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Forms:

• Form 944, Employer's Annual Federal Tax Return
• Form 943, Employer's Annual Federal Tax Return for Agricultural Employees
• Form 945, Annual Return of Withheld Federal Income Tax 
• Form 8922, Third-Party Sick Pay Recap

Instructions:

• Inst 943, Instructions for Form 943, Employer's Annual Federal Tax Return for Agricultural Employees
• Inst 944, Instructions for Form 944, Employer's Annual Federal Tax Return
• Inst 945, Instructions for Form 945, Annual Return of Withheld Federal Income Tax

Publications:

• Pub 1220, Specifications for Electronic Filing of Forms 1097, 1098, 1099, 3921, 3922, 5498, and W-2G
• Pub 1494, Table for Figuring Amount Exempt from Levy on Wages, Salary, and Other Income (Forms 668-W(ACS), 668-W(c)(DO) and 668-W(ICS))
• Pub 4164, Modernized e-file Guide for Software Developers and Transmitters
• Pub 5258, Affordable Care Act (ACA) Information Returns (AIR) Submission Composition and Reference Guide

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