What Are Fringe Benefits

Fringe benefits - often called "perks" - are a form of compensation for services beyond the employee's normal rate of pay.

Examples of fringe benefits include health insurance, use of a company car, childcare reimbursement, housing allowance, educational assistance, vacation pay, sick pay, employee discounts, gym memberships, stock options, and transportation benefits. Essentially, any benefit other than salary than an organization provides its employees is a fringe benefit. Generally speaking, fringe benefits are taxable.

Fringe benefits are subject to income tax withholding and employment taxes, and are generally included in an employee's gross income. Taxable fringe benefits must be included as income on the employee's W-2. Unfortunately, the IRS has indicated that fringe benefits are now an audit focus and it is no laughing matter if you improperly report - even by mistake - the fringe benefits that you provide to your employees.

Experience has shown that these audits are going to be different from regular tax audits in that they're going to be more invasive. Will your organization's accounting and reporting stand up to these audits?

What You'll Learn:This audio conference will help you to determine if your fringe benefits are currently being offered to employees correctly in order to ensure that they are compliant with federal and state payroll tax regulations. This may assist you in avoiding a costly audit in the future.

We'll cover the IRS guidelines for the items that they will focus on when an employment tax audit is being performed, as well as tips on how to perform your own internal review to catch anything that may actually cause an audit.

By attending this audio conference, you will learn:

• Which benefits are taxable - and how they should be reported
• Which benefits are excludable from taxes - and how they should be documented
• How to compute the value of a "good" versus a "service" - and how to handle the payroll tax consequences for those items considered taxable
• How to perform your own internal review to catch anything that may actually cause an audit
• What the IRS guidelines are for an employment tax audit
• What to do if you have some items that should have been considered wages subject to payroll taxation

...and as always, this session will be interactive, so we'll be able to answer your questions on this topic throughout the presentation!