Tax Season 2016: Your Handy Guide

Tax day is looming on April 18th this year, and if you’re a small business owner, you likely have a mountain of paperwork to fill out on time. We’ve compiled our information on the most common (and sometimes most confusing) tax forms, to clarify your last-minute small business tax questions.

Submit By April 18th

W-2

If you’ve ever worked a full time job, you’re likely familiar with a W-2 form. W-2 forms are for employees and track how much you earned and how much the state and federal government taxed you. This piece walks you through line by line if you have any confusion.

1099-MISC

1099 forms are essential for freelancing workers and consultants to file during tax season. There are actually a dozen different 1099 forms; this post focuses on the 1099-MISC.

941

Known as the Employer’s Quarterly Tax Form, Form 941 is how a company reports employee withholdings to the IRS.

Submit After April 18th

1095-C

1095-C is a form for the Affordable Care Act. Its purpose is to specify what insurance has been offered to individual employees. Although you fill out the information, you must distribute it to your employees.

The IRS changed the due dates for this tax form:

• You must furnish the 1095-C to your employees between January 31 and March 31, 2016

• Submitted through the mail, the form is due between February 29 and May 31, 2016

• Submitted digitally, the form is due between March 31 and June 30, 2016

The link above will walk you step by step through each line, so that Applicable Large Employers and employee plans make more sense.

1094-C

Consider 1094-C like 1095-C’s big sibling. It’s basically a cover sheet to sums up all the other 1095-Cs you receive. Although you don’t have to furnish this form to your employees, the last two due dates are the same as listed above on the 1095-C.