CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR TAX & FINANCIAL PROFESSIONALS

IRS Releases Draft of 2019 Form W-4 August 1, 2018

The IRS has released a redesigned Form W-4 for 2019. The draft Form W-4 is only two pages (the 2018 Form W-4 is four pages.) The “Personal Allowances Worksheet,” the “Deductions, Adjustments and Additional Income Worksheet,” and the “Two-Earners/Multiple Jobs
Worksheet” have all been eliminated.

There is no place on the form to report the number of allowances claimed. Instead, the form has added lines for the optional reporting of non-wage income that isn’t subject to withholding, expected bonuses, itemized deductions and expected credits, and the wages of other members of
the taxpayer’s household.

   Query. Will employees want to provide this information to their employers?

The 2019 draft Form W-4 has 11 pages of instructions (the current W-4 includes its instructions in the four page form.) The expansive instructions result in a “projected 1040.” While this method may result in more accurate withholding, gathering the information and completing the
calculation will be a burden on many taxpayers.

Sharon Kreider, CPA, has helped more than 15,000 California tax preparers annually get ready for tax season. She also presents regularly for the AICPA, the California Society of Enrolled Agents, CCH Audio, and Western CPE. You’ll benefit from the detailed, hands-on tax knowledge Sharon will share with you—knowledge she gained through her extremely busy, high-income tax practice in Silicon Valley. With her dynamic presentation style, Sharon will demystify complex individual and business tax legislation. She’s a national lecturer for business and professional groups and consistently receives outstanding evaluations. In 2014, she was awarded the prestigious AICPA 2014 Sidney Kess Award for Excellence in Continuing Education.

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How The $3.5 Trillion Budget Blueprint Could Impact Your Clients

The new reporting requirements on brokers are addressed in Section 80603 of the bill. “Broker,” by definition in Sec. 6045 (c)(1), is expanded to include “any other person who (for a consideration) regularly acts as a middleman with respect to property or services…A person shall not be treated as a broker with respect to activities consisting of managing a farm on behalf of another person.” In turn, the bill defines a “digital asset” as “any digital representation of value which is recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology as specified by the Secretary.