Sign Hawaii Travel Agency Agreement Free

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every one more Callaway CEO of Meridian Medical Staffing today I'm super excited because I've got Joe Conte who is uh with travel nurse tax Joe and I'm a each other about a year ago yeah we've been talking and just kind of you know Joe and I pick each other's brains about travel nursing about travel nursing tax in general and I want to reduce Joe and have him tell you a little bit about what he does and how he got into India specifically travel nurse taxing so here's Joe go ahead take it away thanks mom I appreciated that yeah as you mentioned I'm the owner of travel nurse tax calm I'm a CPA as you can see we focus on tax prep for travel nurses sort of a niche niche in the industry and the way I got started was my wife as a travel nurse out of college she went to FSU nursing school and began her career as a traveler and a very close friend of mine as well at the time sort of that visit to traveler and I was working for the big accounting firms KPMG Arthur Andersen back then and each of them told me there's just a need for some help from the travel nurse tax field so that's kind of how the process got started and here we are 20 years later so I'm gonna start him just asking you some general questions that that I get a lot and again now the tax thing isn't over for a lot of people I just think it'd be a good time to start to introduce people into you know really travel nurse taxing and all the different things they see out there nurses are very very bright very smart people they understand medical but when it comes to taxes as you probably can speak really intelligent about oftentimes they're they're you know that's not what their expertise is at so I get a lot of questions I'm not a CPA so I can't give tax advice so I thought this would be a great opportunity kind of gives you some questions that I get a lot maybe you can answer some questions that people having to you know pick up the phone and call us all the time so let's start with basically one of the one things I hear about is you know someone says hey listen imma I live in Iowa and I'm on an assignment in in New Mexico why is it that I have to take tax out of New Mexico Canada's take taxes out of can I just be taxed at an Iowa because I'm not gonna live in New Mexico forever only there for 13 weeks right yeah that's a very common question that comes up basically with almost every traveler we work with the answer is you pay tax where you work so if you're in New Mexico you're gonna pay income tax on the income you earn while you're in New Mexico if you're an Iowa resident and a New Mexico non-resident you are eligible for credits back to Iowa for those taxes so and that's an important concept that's pretty it's often missed by travelers and by other tax preparers so talk to you about this walk look at what the folks out there watching through that so I'm I'm on assignment I'm in New Mexico and every week my company is taking New Mexico taxes out how does that and I don't I am an Iowa resident I'm gonna file my taxes in the state of Iowa how do i how does that work where I paint all this money to New Mexico so what happens with Iowa is that the end of the year right so I was gonna see your entire income for the year so let's just say you made $50,000 for the year for the entire year I was gonna see the earn $50,000 in tax you on all 50 thousand if you worked in New Mexico I made twenty thousand of that in New Mexico you would then be eligible for a credit for the taxes you pay to New Mexico on that income so you know a good rule of thumb is if you owe a bunch of money to your home state you might have messed up on your taxes you may not have applied applied for those credits properly and we see that often okay so that's pretty common and obviously that's up to a nurse to make sure that when they're sitting down with their CPA that they're asking these questions and they have somebody that understands how that really works right absolutely so can you talk about this term that I hear a lot called is that what people are talking about they say what's your tax home right so yeah this is another key you know tax issue here with travelers so your tax home is very often the same as your permanent residence for most for most people in fact it is the same thing for travelers it may not be your tax home is basically you know the city of the geography geographical area where you where you work and spend you know majority of time working and earning income your economic home base essentially it could be different from your permanent tax home which is basically where you have a family our residents right so it's where you pay your taxes it's the state in which you you claim as your state that you resided right correct correct correct most of us are the same thing I hear there's tax home I'm like what can I just say that state that you live any to pay your taxes in but is that's that's a new term so if Ike back track a little bit I get this a lot and I thought you know you just to kind of have you confirm this nurses sometimes don't understand that we don't have a choice as a company we have to for the mystic that we're talking about I have to make sure that New Mexico is given their payroll taxes because that is in fact where the wage is earned and I get people saying well can you just pretend I'm still in Iowa the answer is legally no I can't and it's the reason why because we can't because Iowa can't get that money they even earned it New Mexico has to get that money because that's in fact where the the the wages is being is taken place so for that reason nurses have to understand that we can't just arbitrarily go okay we're not gonna take care of New Mexico we're gonna we're gonna beat it wrong and falsify and actually claim in Iowa that's that's completely wrong and that's the bottom line why we can't just arbitrarily say we'll just take taxes out in Iowa correct that's in a nutshell yeah okay so I did that well see I got a future I headed back to school alright so another question I have for you this is a real common one and that is that we we look at a lot of offers and a lot of nurses were doing to share other companies offers with us and sometimes I look at these offers and I'm going wow this is this is really crazy that this company is offering almost what seems like just an arbitrary amount but a huge amount two thirds over 50% to two-thirds of the income tax free and a lot of nurses asking what should I do in a company option maybe hot and how to empower and why do they do that but first of all what do I do if a company offers me something that's that's you know crazy amount of money tax free right yeah this is a big issue here so first of all the ways a professional nurse earns is not arbitrary there's a market for that there's a value in that and the IRS sees that as well so if an arbitrarily low wage is being paid that's a problem for the agency but also for the individual nurse you know to deal with it could be it would tax penalties and other other issues that they don't want to deal with so that's one thing the other thing is the the per diem portion of that is dictated by the GSA so there's a lab will amounts up to a certain amount can be paid as it as a say you know reimbursement or tax-free per diem so you're talking about two things they're separate there's a wage which is taxable in them is a per diem which is which is non-taxable and the circumstances will dictate these these amounts based on the market so when a nurse sees something that looks erroneous or looks lopsided can she go to her company say hey how are you guys coming up with this figure where two thirds of my of my hourly rate is tax-free I mean what does the nurse do in that case what would you recommend that they do well I recommend the nurse absolutely say something to the recruiter of the agency and say you know is this a market value is this a standard rate you know or better yet consult with the tax preparer an experienced tax person with regard to that so what you basically is if it's too good to be true it probably is and I guess the follow-up question of that why would why would a company want to do that why what would be what would be the reason a company would want to do that to a nurse well there's a lot in it for everybody here the agencies if they pay a lower taxable wage they're paying a lower amount of tax as well this payroll taxes that they're no longer having to pay which adds up to tens of thousands or more of dollars depending on the size of the company so it's a really simple reason as to why they would want to do that so what you're telling me is that I make sure I get this right companies actually want nurses to take low tax rich because they're gonna pay low payroll on that tax right so be really really really careful with a company that's trying to throw too much at you tax free yes the sale and the pitch there is the nurse also will pay lower tax which is true so it's a benefit both sides from that perspective but when it comes to your taxes you don't want to be paid of ways that's lower than the the market value for the service that a professional and experienced nurse you know provides so there's numbers there's there's a market value that should be adhered to you're not sure that makes sense and most agencies are great with doing this but there's always some out there that you know there's there's there's consistent issues with you know alright let's go in this jump into a heavier topic right I want to talk a little bit about these what we call what we call here meridian medical staffing extra hours and what I'm specifically talking those nurses that work on 12-hour shifts and you know the contracts that we're seeing very frequently are here's 20 bucks an hour and I'll use this one cuz it works out mathematically here's five hundred and forty dollars weekly tax-free which if you divide 540 by thirty six hours that's fifteen dollars so this is a basically $35 an hour hourly compensations which sounds like a relatively okay fair deal what I'm seeing though is that the agencies are saying when you work a 37th hour the only thing we can pay you is just the 20 bucks RB just officially a fixed sum figure so my question and by the way this is kind of a little bit heavier topic they're being told by these others by C and they and increase that 540 because then that would be what was called way to be characterization but my question is could an agency for over that 37th hour pinners $35 an hour taxable is that wage recharacterization well the answer the question is absolutely the agency can pay the nurse on our 37 plus a different way into higher wage and and they can certainly it's not wagering characterization at all it's not so again last time I saw the governor likes it when you make more money and they put you in a higher tax bracket and you pay more taxes if I'm not mistaken right absolutely so this thing about saying we can't give you I mean what they're saying is true they can't take 540 and make it $600 because that would in fact be wager causation because it's about the tax-free dollars am i right absolutely you can't increase the per diem sort of arbitrarily they were working actually our because that that would be exactly the basically the definition of recharacterizing you know income and you don't want to go there but you can certainly pay an hourly wage that's higher right so that's not what they would consider that wage rate recharacterization at all so with your business again you work exclusively with travel nurses mmm I write travel nurses travel medical professionals across the board doctors nurses that's right gotcha well Arie this is mostly travel nurse Lee but let's the corporate everybody what's the number one let's talk about some of the number one mistakes or things that you that you think would help our audience today they're really kind of know going into a you know relatively everything we're already starting in this one millisecond quarter but going into a new year what's the biggest mistake you seen travelers either maker or you know with regard to their career as a travel nurse yeah I'm gonna give you two here since you give me this chance to answer the question the first one relates back to the first question you asked with the state's you know not applying properly for the state income tax credits that you do if you're an iowa resident and you work outside of the state you're eligible for and you know you can receive credits for taxes paid to other states that's a huge one that equates to dollars significant dollars every year and very often we see that travelers either missed that if they try to prepare taxes on their own or if they go to one of those kind of walking in tax shops that might not have tax prep experts that know this field so that's the first that's a big one the second one would really would be regarding their tax home maintaining your tax home is a key to allow the traveler to continue to receive tax free stipends and I see often where the lines get blurred the traveler might you know not follow certain steps to keep the tax home in place which could then lead to the per diems being taxed and cost you quite a bit of money so that wasn't the - gotcha so you're a saying is that you know on this applying for tax credits that's something they should do through a CPA is that something that they could do on their own is that something has to be done in advance or before the year ends that's something that's done on the tax return when you file your state tax returns you apply for the credit within the tax forms there's each state has its own form to apply for those credits and again it's often missed for tax preparers that aren't experienced in preparing multi-state returns right I'll agree with that I personally get calls from some of our travelers that make it in depth up to me during tax season they're saying hey I'm sitting here at XYZ in the strip mall company and I'm sitting here with this tax repair and they're confused about my time which makes me scratch my head saying how can somebody be preparing your taxes be confused about what you do so I guess what I want to kind of go ahead okay so I'll tell you a funny story I get calls every year this year included from from travelers sometimes they call me right from the chair at the the walk-in shop hey you know I thought I could do it on my own I walked across the street here and and the tax preparer has some questions can you help yeah so so I will I usually will help at that moment in time because I don't want the traveler getting stuck and sometimes they've already paid and I want them paying twice so I get calls from those shops every year a couple of them okay and so it's yeah it's an interesting interesting but it happens well and you mean I know your your your your your kind of guy wouldn't say this but I'm gonna say this to our audience when you're traveling go out and get a CPA somebody that understands not only you know taxes but travel taxes and if they can find someone like you and travel nurse tax that truly is dedicated to travel nursing I mean that makes all the sense of the world and you know it's the same cost of them to go with you as it would be with any other CPA you might be paying a couple more bucks I think than one of those walk-ins but you won't say this Jill but I will the benefit and the peace of mind that you're gonna get from not only having a CPA but having somebody who was a travel you know travel medical professional CPA to me is is almost a no-brainer so there's my choice happen with you on that I've been doing this for quite a while and as I said my wife is a traveler I kind of do in this forever I saw it firsthand how the travel experience impacts your tax returns so yeah I absolutely agree with you on that yeah having some it understands what it's like to have a 13 week assignment or whatever you have with the doctors you know a shorter assignments and go from state to state is it's and I would set that up early I mean I I know that you just took out time with tax season but I certainly would recommend interviewers giving you a call to kind of you know at least talk about the yeah I spend most I spend most of the rest of this year you know working with travelers they cal with questions helping you know give advice and kind of getting them situated for the tack for upcoming tax season I also will mention that the fee is probably the same as H&R block or the other shops very very similar if not sometimes lower so it's right there I'm very competitive with with those with those companies that's perfect well I really appreciate your time today I'm gonna mow guaranteed that I'm gonna get some recommendations to talk to you again so hopefully right we will we'll go during this summer here we'll have an opportunity I'll get some fields some more questions that some people had and if you've got time will ring you out again but I really appreciate everyone for watching and hopefully we answered some just 36 thousand foot fundamental questions about you know travel nurse tax and how to how to apply that as a traveling medical professional so Joe I appreciate your time today and we'll we'll talk to hopefully again real soon thank you bark I appreciate it talking a bit all right take care