Doing your own payroll makes sense in the beginning. One or two employees, a spreadsheet, a little help from software it works. Until it doesn’t. The problem is that the moment DIY stops working usually isn’t obvious until something breaks. So here are the...
Making your first hire is a milestone. It’s also the moment a pile of federal and state paperwork lands on your desk, most of it with deadlines you didn’t know existed. Miss one and the penalties are real. Here’s the clean, current checklist for...
This is one of the first questions a new Florida employer should ask, and one of the last they usually get around to. Workers’ compensation isn’t optional here it’s state law but when it kicks in depends entirely on your industry and headcount. Get...
Every year I get the same call from a new S-corp owner, usually right after their accountant scared them: “Wait — I have to put myself on payroll?” Yes. And how much you pay yourself is one of the few payroll decisions that can trigger an IRS audit if you...
The number of business owners who stay with a payroll company they can’t stand because they think they’re trapped until January 1st it’s a lot. I hear it every year: “I’d love to switch, but I don’t want to mess up my taxes, so...
A Fort Myers contractor called me a while back, rattled. He’d been paying two guys as 1099 independent contractors for three years no tax withholding, no employer taxes, just a check and a form in January. Simpler, cheaper, and the guys were fine with it. Then...
You posted a job at $22 an hour. So that’s what the new hire costs you — $22 an hour, right? Not even close. And in my nine years at a national payroll company, the single most common surprise I watched land on a small business owner’s desk was the gap...
I’ve run payroll for hundreds of restaurants across Southwest Florida. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that restaurant owners who try to manage payroll themselves — or who use a generic payroll service that doesn’t understand the...
A Fort Myers restaurant owner called me last year after getting a notice from the IRS. He’d missed a payroll tax deposit by four days while dealing with a family emergency. Four days. The penalty was over $800 on a $20,000 payroll. He didn’t know the...
I spent nine years selling payroll for a national provider. I know how payroll pricing works — and how it is often presented so the real number only shows up on the invoice. If you’re a Fort Myers small business owner trying to figure out what payroll should...
