Sturhahn Breazeale & Co, PC CPA

02/23/2025

A proposal in the Missouri Congress would eliminate income taxes and replace it with higher sales taxes applied against goods & services. This would result in lower income families & elderly paying more taxes. Many retired people pay no state income taxes now, but there is way they could avoid higher sales taxes applied on many more things, services as well as goods - beauty/barber services, labor on car repairs, etc. If this will affect you, contact your Missouri House & Senate representatives to let them know.

01/12/2025

January 15th is the 4th quarter estimated tax payment due date.

08/30/2020

The POTUS has put into place a delay of paying into social security for employees, subject to their employer's opt-in. How will this effect you individually for the very near future? It depends if your employer opts in. If they do not then it will not effect your paycheck at all. If they do then there will be no f**a withholding from your paychecks for the rest of the year, that is 6.2% of your gross pay. These funds are what is transferred to the Social Security Administration to pay benefits to current retirees.

However, that 6.2% liability does not go away, it is delayed only. It appears that come January all of those funds will have to be paid in. There is not clear guidance on this. Some analysts believe that employers will then double the amount of f**a taxes withheld in 2021 to 12.4% for the following 4 months in order to get reimbursed for the taxes that they are now required to pay in. Others believe that employers will need to withhold the ENTIRE amount of those 4 months of delayed taxes in the first 1 or 2 paychecks of 2021, which would of course result in great hardship for many employees who are caught unawares & not planned accordingly.

What happens with employees who work for some or all of that time with reduced taxes, but are no longer working in January, when it is time to pay the piper? It appears the employer is on the hook to make up the difference out of its own coffers. This is probably why they get to make the decision to opt-in or not, they are the ones on the line for it in the end.

For an employee making $50,000/year, the 4 month delay of taxes amounts to around $1,000.

04/27/2020

If you couldn't get through on the IRS "Get My Payment" portal before, give it a try now. They've done maintenance work on it.

04/12/2020

The IRS will open a new option on their website this coming week called "Get My Payment". It's for those who have not gotten their refunds directly deposited in the past, or who pay them with a check. You can use it to give the IRS your banking information. Do not respond to any messages asking for this information. Only do it by going to irs.gov & selecting Get My Payment.

04/01/2020

Most people do not have to do anything to get their economic impact payments. Those who haven't filed a return for 2018 or 2019 will need to in order to get a payment, though you have the rest of the year to do so. For low income or seniors there will apparently be a very simplified online form to give them the necessary info. Bookmark irs.gov/coronavirus to periodically check current information.

To explain the tax relief for those affected by coronavirus.

03/30/2020

All Missouri individuals & businesses have until July 15th to file & pay 2019 taxes, both federal & state. For self-employeds or others who have to make estimated payments, the first 2 payments for 2020 are also due July 15th.

01/09/2018

I've heard that some employees are requesting their W-2s from their employers asap so that they can file their tax returns quickly to get their refunds. Sorry folks, even if you have your W-2 the IRS will not accept any filings until January 29th. This is a result of politicians passing tax legislation in December - the IRS must update its software, and with their drastic budget cuts nothing gets done in a hurry.