2012-2025 Form

WHOA! You may have a BIG problem. When you started, are you certain you did not fill in a W-4 form? Are you certain that your employer doesn’t have your SS#? If that’s the case, I would be alarmed. Do you have paycheck stubs showing how they calculated your withholding? ( BTW you are entitled to those under the law, and if you are not receiving them, I would demand them….)If your employer is just giving you random checks with no calculation of your wages and withholdings, you have a rogue employer. They probably aren’t payin in what they purport to withhold from you.

First, the LLC operates as tax partnership (“TP”) as the default tax status if no election has been made as noted in Treasury Regulation Section 301.7701-3(b)(i). For legal purposes, we have a LLC. For tax purposes we have a tax partnership. Since we are discussing a tax issue here, we will discuss the issue from the perspective of a TP.A partner cannot under any circumstances be an employee of the TP as Revenue Ruling 69-184 dictated such. And, the 2016 preamble to Temporary Treasury Regulation Section 301.7701-2T notes the Treasury still supports this revenue ruling.Though a partner can engage in a transaction with the TP in a non partner capacity (Section 707a(a)).A partner receiving a 707(a) payment from the partnership receives the payment as any stranger receives a payment from the TP for services rendered. This partner gets treated for this transaction as if he/she were not a member of the TP (Treasury Regulation Section 1.707-1(a).As an example, a partner owns and operates a law firm specializing in contract law. The TP requires advice on terms and creation for new contracts the TP uses in its business with clients. This partner provides a bid for this unique job and the TP accepts it. Here, the partner bills the TP as it would any other client, and the partner reports the income from the TP client job as he/she would for any other client. The TP records the job as an expense and pays the partner as it would any other vendor. Here, I am assuming the law contract job represents an expense versus a capital item. Of course, the partner may have a law corporation though the same principle applies.Further, a TP can make fixed payments to a partner for services or capital — called guaranteed payments as noted in subsection (c).A 707(c) guaranteed payment shows up in the membership agreement drawn up by the business attorney. This payment provides a service partner with a guaranteed payment regardless of the TP’s income for the year as noted in Treasury Regulation Section 1.707-1(c).As an example, the TP operates an exclusive restaurant. Several partners contribute capital for the venture. The TP’s key service partner is the chef for the restaurant. And, the whole restaurant concept centers on this chef’s experience and creativity. The TP’s operating agreement provides the chef receives a certain % profit interest but as a minimum receives yearly a fixed $X guaranteed payment regardless of TP’s income level. In the first year of operations the TP has low profits as expected. The chef receives the guaranteed $X payment as provided in the membership agreement.The TP allocates the guaranteed payment to the capital interest partners on their TP k-1s as business expense. And, the TP includes the full $X guaranteed payment as income on the chef’s K-1. Here, the membership agreement demonstrates the chef only shares in profits not losses. So, the TP only allocates the guaranteed expense to those partners responsible for making up losses (the capital partners) as noted in Treasury Regulation Section 707-1(c) Example 3. The chef gets no allocation for the guaranteed expense as he/she does not participate in losses.If we change the situation slightly, we may change the tax results. If the membership agreement says the chef shares in losses, we then allocate a portion of the guaranteed expense back to the chef following the above treasury regulation.As a final note, a TP return requires knowledge of primary tax law if the TP desires filing a completed an accurate partnership tax return.I have completed the above tax analysis based on primary partnership tax law. If the situation changes in any manner, the tax outcome may change considerably. www.rst.tax

I doubt that they “forgot.” Plus, there’s no reason for them to amend your W-2 unless they subsequently paid your employee FICA, but that’s more complicated than it may seem.If an employer fails to withhold the employee-FICA tax, the employer remains liable to pay the tax that it should have withheld. But you’re liable for it as well. It’s far easier for the IRS to collect it from the employer — the penalty is 100% of the tax amount, so the IRS will usually take that and apply it as the tax itself, if the employer doesn’t correct it himself first. In that case, you no longer owe the tax, but you owe the employer the amount of the tax (without interest or additional penalty), because he paid your tax on your behalf.Here’s where it gets complicated. Whether and how the employer gets the money back from you is a matter to be settled between the two of you — the IRS has nothing to do with it and, frankly, couldn’t care less. And assuming that we’re not in the same calendar year (which we can’t be), the employer just withholding that amount from your pay may very well violate state laws (depending on your state, obviously, but most would require your consent). In the meantime, the employer’s payment of the employee-FICA that it paid was additional wages to you, and the withholding (income tax and FICA) on that has to be taken from your other paychecks (or else the problem would occur all over again).There is a way in which the employer can get away with very substantially reduced penalties, but that applies only in cases of unintentional misclassification (as an independent contractor), and that’s not what happened to you. First, you were given a W-2, which indicates that you were treated as an employee. Second, you dont say anything about “forgetting” to withhold income tax — and that in and of itself disqualifies the employer from taking advantage of these reduced penalties. (If they withheld income tax, they obviously were not mistakenly treating you as a contractor.)

I'd say that you should just seek out the jobs that interest you and apply for them. Many don't have such onerous application forms. Some even allow you to apply through LinkedIn. And if you target a small set of companies that really interest you, then it's worth the extra effort to customize each application. Many recruiters and hiring managers, myself included, give more weight to candidates who seem specifically interested in an opportunity, as compared to those who seem to be taking a shotgun approach to the job seeking process.