What a January it has been for those of us who have to pay (or withhold, in the case of Employers) Oregon State Taxes. First of all, we sent an email out to clients saying that we weren’t sure whether or not the Federal Government was going to pass the Payroll Tax extension and not to do anything until we found out for sure. The tax extension did pass (at least through February!), and we received the Payroll Taxes at the end of December for our MAS 90/200 program from Sage Software. We then sent another email saying “Game On!” and starting assisting clients with their Tax Table changes in the software. Then, when the first Payrolls of 2012 were run, many of our clients reported not enough State Tax was being taking out of some Employees checks. The State Of Oregon has new filing statuses of M1, S2, and S3 this year – all for Employees whose annual salaries/wages are greater than $50,000. In several cases, Employees using these filing statuses who were supposed to have between $95 and $105 withheld for Oregon State Taxes, only had $24 to $28 withheld. So – yes, it’s true – another email went out saying “Hold on! Something is wrong!” and we stopped loading the new 2012 Tax Tables.
Sage republished the Payroll Tax Tables for the State Of Oregon on January 9th (they had to add a new calculation step in the Payroll Tax Tables) and we once again sent out an email saying “Play Ball!”. Although it looks like everything works as it should, there appears to be an oddity with employees who make more than $50,000 in wages, but who have a Cafeteria Plan or Pension Plan that reduces their Withholding Wages down to $42,000 to $44,000. Stay tuned – we’re not sending another email out just yet – but we reserve the right to do so!
And just think: We might be doing this all over again at the end of February! As one of my very close friends would say “Oy Vey!”
About Sue Bennett