Your home must be regularly and exclusively used as the principal place of business. This can be met if you use it regularly for admin or management activities like bookkeeping and you don't have another fixed location that is set aside for those activities. Be sure that a room or at least portion of a room is used just for these business purposes (i.e. your kitchen table won't qualify).
For those who work from their home, here are some good pointers in deducting the mileage from your home to the various points of business that you will need to go to (Post Office, Supplies, Clients, Bank, etc.).
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In a compromise that will defer but not solve the problem, Congress has decided that two more months of payroll tax cuts will be given. A little tax savings is better than nothing.
With any tax law change, there are caveats and unintended consequences. One of those is that they don't want those in higher earning brackets to save more than 2/12's of their annual FICA savings by taking all their income in the first few months. To resolve that they have also added a recapture tax to the payroll system.
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Like last year, the Emancipation day celebrations in Washington DC will delay the filing day to April 17th. This will give procrastinators 2 extra days to take care of their annual tax filing!
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For 2012 the IRS has published the following chart that shows when you can expect your refund if you efile and direct deposit your refunds:
Basically if you send in your return by Wednesday, it will be available the following Wednesday. (Interesting since last year Friday was the key day for deposits). Note that this is if all goes smoothly and your return doesn't have any processing issues or flags for review and your banking institution doesn't have any processing delays.
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With many people losing their jobs in this economy, many are turning to home based work to make ends meet. One deduction that you may qualify for is the home-office deduction. This article does a good job of highlighting who would qualify.
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For most small employers, this won't apply until 2013 at the soonest. The IRA has released more details about the disclosure requirements of health insurance premiums on employees W-2's. In 2011 (the W2 you will receive in a few weeks) the disclosure is optional as they transition in the requirement. Next year the disclosure is required if you employ more than 250 employees. After 2013 it is uncertain whether the 250 employee limit will still exempt smaller employers or not, so we will wait for further clarification. The notice also answers questions about what type of costs should be reported, and what to do if employees pay for a portion of the cost through paycheck withholding.
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