A weakness in WordPress blogs made it possible for someone to add code classified as malware to our blog yesterday. We were alerted about the the problem and have taken steps to remove the code. We’ve requested that the site be rescanned to verify that the problem is no longer present, but it’s possible that some web browsers will continue to report our site as potentially dangerous for some time.

Looking at the code that was inserted, our site itself never contained anything dangerous – it was merely a link to a site that might have contained dangerous code.

In the end, this just goes to show that you’ll never know when being able to program a find-and-replace routine in PERL will come in handy…

Categories: Full Potential News
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For those of you who don’t follow updates to employment compliance forms, you might have missed the big news. The 2/02/09 revision of the Homeland Security Department’s form I-9 was set to expire 6/30/09 and be replaced. When an udpated form wasn’t made available by the expiration date, they permitted the February version to continue to be used.

Well, at long last, the revised I-9 is available.

If your employees filled out the 2/02/09 version of the form, no action is required from you at this point.

If your employees last filled out a version prior to the 2/02/09 edition, you should have them complete the new edition. Take the time to re-verify their documentation to ensure that they still meet the eligibility requirements to work in the United States.

Any new employees should use the 8/07/09 revision.

Categories: Tax News and Tips
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Intuit has released a new update (R8) for QuickBooks 2009 Pro and Premier. This update includes a number of feature enhancement and bug fixes, including improvements to online banking and payroll.

As with many of their major releases, Intuit has made it available for manual download and install before they make it available through Automatic Updates. To find the download, go to the QuickBooks Product Updates. Make sure you have the correct year and version of QuickBooks showing. Download the installer and then run it to get started.

If you’re not in a hurry, this update will be made automatically in a couple of week (assuming you have automatic updates turned on, and you should).

Categories: Business Tips, General News
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There are some changes happening in the back-end of the web server that might possibly cause some e-mail or other disruptions over this weekend. We’re making these changes in part because of a high number of messages going missing under our old setup. Hopefully, these behind-the-scenes changes will help to make everything better.

Part of the change also involves a migration between FullPotentialLLP.com and FullPotentialCPA.com. In the end, they will both work as mirrors of each other so that it doesn’t matter which one you remember, but we’ll be switching all of our marketing materials, web content and e-mails over the CPA domain.

Categories: Full Potential News
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Will you be in the Mill Creek area July 18-19? If so, you owe it to yourself to stop by the Mill Creek Festival. Be sure to bring the dogs and the kids, if you’ve got ‘em. There will be performances, events, car shows, arts & crafts, bouncy inflatables, a beer garden, hundreds of vendor booths and much more!

Taxes are probably the last thing you want to talk about, but we’d love to see you there. Stop by our booth and say hello. We’ll even bribe you with swag.

Categories: General News
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If you track Washington sales tax rates in QuickBooks, you should take a moment to update everything for Q3 2009. It’s simple and takes just a minute or two.

Step 1: Download WAQBQ309.IIF from the Department of Revenue website. Save it somewhere easy to find, like your Desktop.

Step 2: Open QuickBooks and log into your company file as you usually do.

Step 3: Open the File menu and then the following chain of sub-menus: Utilities > Import > IIF Files…

Step 4: QuickBooks will prompt you to open the file you downloaded in Step 1. Select it and click Open.

A progress bar will display as the rates are imported. QuickBooks will do the following:

• If the import file has a rate that isn’t in your QB file, it will be added.
• If the import file has a rate with the same name as one in your QB file, it will be updated.
• Any items in your file with no matches in the import file will remain unchanged.

Some people don’t like adding the hundred-plus sales tax items. There’s no easy way around that, but you can always choose the Make Inactive option on any rates that you don’t plan to use.

Categories: Tax News and Tips
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The state of Washington has passed a new law changing the taxation of some digital products. This law is set to go into effect July 26, 2009. More information can be found at the DOR web site.

What does it mean for you?

The new law brings more conformity in the taxation of digital products. Historically, any downloaded product (software, video, music and others) were taxed as retail sales, subject to the Retailing B&O code and retail sales tax. However, confusion existed if similar products were used online or in a streaming format, without a download. Many businesses were reporting this income under the Services classification and avoiding retail sales tax.

The new law makes all products (with only a few exceptions) subject to retail sales tax. Products most affected include Software-as-a-Service, “cloud” computing, automated digital services (including research sites) and streamed music and video.

Categories: Tax News and Tips
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In a recession like this, governments start looking for anything to help cut costs and increase revenues. One of the new tax laws passed by Washington state recently involves a requirement that monthly filers of the Combined Excise Tax Return do so electronically, and that they use a new EFT system for payment.

Electronic filing reduces the cost and increases the accuracy of return filing. Washington has been encouraging everyone to switch to e-file for a while now, but many people (including myself) have resisted. There is good news, though: a major update the online filing system has made it much more functional and removed some of my concerns.

Electronic payment, of course, means no more floating checks through the mail. But there’s a silver lining here as well: previously, the state charged you to pay electronically, but the new EFT system has no fees. (For non-monthly filers, you can still use the e-check option for $1 or the credit option for 2.5%, but why would you?)

These requirements take effect July 1, 2009. The return for this period is not filed until August 25, 2009, but it is better to get started on the registration process soon. Failure to file and pay electronically will result in a 10% penalty.

For more information, see the DOR web site or give us a call.

Categories: Tax News and Tips
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As of May 21, 2009, Justin Dagna is officially licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Washington!

Categories: Full Potential News
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A recent court case may dramatically change how sales tax collection is handled in the United State of America. The case, [Dell Marketing LP v. Taxation and Revenue Dept. of the State of New Mexico, No. 26,843, N.M. Ct. App. 2008] involves a dispute between the state of New Mexico and Dell Computers.

Dell asserts that it does not owe sales tax in New Mexico as it has no physical presence there – all it does is ship computers into the state from its out of state location. These orders are all catalog or Internet based. New Mexico nevertheless pursued the case to force Dell to pay New Mexico state and occupation taxes.

The case linked above is the finding from the New Mexico Supreme Court, which determined that New Mexico could assess sales and occupation tax and that this assessment did not represent a barrier to interstate commerce that would be protected. The case was appealed the United State Supreme Court, which has refused to hear the case. While this doesn’t have the same force as if the Supreme Court had chosen to hear and affirm the case, their decision means that the New Mexico court’s finding will stand, and will become a precedent that other courts can borrow on.

Washington implemented the Destination-Based Sales Tax rules last year, which require remote sellers to charge sales tax based on the delivery location of goods, not the location of the seller. Of greater concern, Washington is part of a coalition of state, the SSUTA which intends to make remote sellers collect sales tax on sales to any state. This New Mexico decision may not directly affect you today, but it paves the way for a dramatic change in sales tax policies.

Categories: Tax News and Tips
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