Year-Round Compass

October brings us closer to the end of the calendar year, however, we all know that payroll year-end preparation started on January 1. Here are some tips and reminders for year-end:

• Attend training
• For full details, see the “Year-end training” article in this newsletter.
• Reconcile, reconcile, reconcile
• The Wage and Tax Report includes audit messages whenever questionable wage or tax conditions occur. The errors may result in incorrect payroll tax reports, late filings, or penalties. It is critical that all messages on this report are researched and resolved.
• Path: Payroll > Reports > US Wage and Tax Report (select ‘Include only Employees with Validation Errors)
• Closely review your W-2 Management Report
• Forms W-2 are a key year-end deliverable. Review, audit, and balance your W-2 Management Reports each payroll. Understanding and reconciling Form W-2 data prior to year-end will reduce your workload in January.
• The W-2 Management Report is found in Dayforce under Year End > USA Year End > Overview > Reports
• Download the 2021 “Form W-2 poster” found in the QE Packet
• Update your off-boarding process so that it includes completing termed employees’ Forms W-2
• Confirm tax form indicators and display
• The U.S. Earning and Deduction Matrix Validation Report allows you to reconcile the taxability and the display on Forms W-2 and 1099.
• To manually generate the report: Select Year End > USA Year End > Overview > Reports > Select US Earning & Deduction Matrix Report. The report will be delivered in the Message Center.
• Changing the Tax Form Mapping:
• Earnings: Payroll Setup > Earnings and Deductions > Earnings > Tax & Compliance > Tax Form/Report Mapping
• Deductions: Payroll Setup > Earnings and Deductions > Deductions > Tax & Compliance > Tax Form/Report Mapping
• Review your 2022 pay calendar and add holidays
• Dayforce automatically generates pay periods on a rolling basis, however, the application will not create your company’s specific 2022 holidays used in the WFM timesheets.
• Get started by reviewing these great documents in the QE Packet:
• “Payroll holidays”
• “2022 Annual schedule at a glance”
• “Payroll configuration” – search for “Define Pay Holidays”
• Use the Year End tab all year
• Review and verify Forms W-2 to make Year-End 2021 your best. You can also verify, print, and reprint all tax forms (W-2, W-2c, 1099R,1099M, and 1099NEC). If you have not enabled this tab, navigate here: System Admin > Roles > Features > Year End
• Ask employees to review their check stubs
• Add a check stub message or include the request in your company newsletter.
• Do they have the correct state and local withholding?
• Is their name, address, and SSN correct?
• Be prepared for open enrollment (OE)
• OE is a busy season - especially when it falls during the calendar year-end. To help you work more efficiently and effectively, use these OE tools and training:
• Our training program includes the OE/Benefit training and testing
• Search the Knowledge Base for “open enrollment”
• Stay current with compliance changes
• The Product News section of the Ceridian Customer Community includes updates about new and upcoming compliance changes, plus browser support, feature releases, and product information. Review the articles regularly to identify the changes that impact your business and may require you to make changes in Dayforce.

The adage, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ may have been written for payroll users. Preparing today will make December and January much more relaxed. You might even be able to take some time off to enjoy the holiday season.

Learning tracks

Whether you are completing your first year-end or an experienced customer performing year-end tasks again, we have a training plan for you:

• Payroll U.S.
• Benefits PPACA

Payroll sessions run until December 10 and PPACA classes continue until November 22. Classes are filling up quickly so don’t wait to register. Recordings of the sessions will be posted on the CEC.

Recorded videos launch dates:

• Payroll
• Auditing for Year-End and Quarter-End Payroll – U.S. (Video) October 18
• Processing Year-End Tasks for Payroll – U.S. (Video) October 18
• Processing Year-End Tasks for Payroll – U.S. – Refresher (Video) October 18
• Generating W-2C’s (Video) January 10
• Preparing for the New Year January 2022 (TBD)
• PPACA
• Processing Year-End Requirements for PPACA (Video) October 18
• Processing Year-End Requirements for PPACA – Refresher (Video) October 18
• Processing Year-End Corrections for PPACA (Video) January 10

Year-end training trial membership 

Year-end trial memberships are available to customers without an Education package, and/or without active Live memberships assigned to employees. The trial includes access to all year-end recorded videos only.

How to register (starting November 1):

• Customers without Dayforce Live memberships may complete and submit the year-end account request form.
• User credentials will be emailed to eligible customers within two business days.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. ― Alexander Graham Bell

Our free, one-hour October Customer Success webinar features U.S. Year-End best practices. Join us Thursday, October 28 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

The agenda includes:

• Year-Round Program
• Key dates
• Year-end training
• W-2s and ACA

Round up your entire payroll crew for this presentation and plan out the next couple months. There is a limit of 1,000 participants so register today.

Note: Can’t join us? Register anyway and we’ll share a recording following the live event.

To prevent tax code fallouts, it is important to contact your assigned CTS rep via Ceridian Customer Community or call them at 866-301-6989 as soon as you know about a new jurisdictional tax requirement. What are “fallouts?” They are tax liabilities that CTS cannot process because the tax code is either:

• missing from your tax jurisdictional profile
• invalid
• inactive

CTS compares your payroll tax data to your tax jurisdictional profile each pay cycle. Unmatched tax data is placed in a suspense account and will only be deposited after you give verification and other required info (for example: agency assigned account number, deposit frequency, or Power of Attorney).

A lapse in confirmation or resolution generates agency notices, amendments, and penalty exposure for your company. Reduce your exposure by taking immediate action.

Mark your calendar for ACA

Do you have a contract for our ACA services? Be prepared for the ACA deadlines starting this month.

• October 15 – The Auto-Fill task is the first critical step (and the easiest) in creating your ACA tax forms. The Auto-Fill task creates the forms, loads available employee data, and then displays errors for your review and correction. This allows you to see how much work is needed to file your 2021 ACA tax forms. It is critical that you run the Auto-Fill task no later than mid-October to meet the January 13 filing deadline*. Simply navigate to: PPACA > Year-End Process > select 2021 > click Open Year > click Auto-Fill. Select Generate PPACA Year End data, make sure all legal entities are listed. Finally, select the coverage method for your company and click Start Task.
  
  Important: The Auto-Fill task will not automatically complete or create Forms 1095-C in some cases. More details can be found in the QE Packet under “ACA configuration.”
  
  
• November 12 – Professional Service deadline for requesting these ACA projects:
  • PPACA module setup - Monitors part-time employees that may cross the 30 average hours threshold (making them eligible for medical benefits). This process allows these individuals to be monitored against IRS requirements monthly.
  • ACA year-end setup - Used for creating employees’ Forms 1095-C and the employer’s Forms 1094-C to be electronically filed with the IRS. This automated process will help with 2021 Forms 1095-C / 1094-C production and cut down on manual entry.
    
    
• January 13* - Deadline for ACA submissions
  You must lock your PPACA year-end filing and mark it as ‘Ready to Send’ no later than 11:00 p.m. local time on January 13. Miss this deadline and Ceridian will be unable to file on your behalf. This will result in a failure to file with the IRS.

*There is no expectation that IRS deadlines will be extended this year.

Dependent SSNs

Sometimes the employee does not know their dependent’s SSN when this information is being collected. If possible, do not key a temporary value into this field while waiting to collect the valid number – leave it blank.

If you forget to fix this later, it will cause a rejected record - or even a filing reject due to a mismatch with the IRS/SSA databases. That means expect extra work in January. You will still need either the dependent’s SSN or DOB to file the employee manually. Collect it up front as part of your on-boarding process – request to see the dependent’s Social Security Card, if possible, to confirm the last name and SSN match what is in Dayforce.

For more information, as well as for what to do if you have already keyed a temporary SSN, see the new KB article, “ACA Dependent Social Security Numbers” on the Ceridian Customer Community.

Be sure to download the new QE Packet and review “Form 1095-C services”. Keep watching your inbox for more ACA updates.

This enhancement to Dayforce payroll allows your U.S. employees to easily connect and transfer their Form W-2 information from Dayforce to the TurboTax application. TurboTax is used by millions of people each year for tax filing.

• Your employees can seamlessly bring over their Form W-2 tax information into Intuit® TurboTax directly from Dayforce for simple and accurate tax preparation and filing.
• This convenient process simplifies and automates tax-filing activities for your people, which also means potentially fewer calls to your payroll team over lost Forms W-2.

Your organization can, however, opt-out of this functionality by completing the steps below in Dayforce before Forms W-2 are generated. Any changes to opt-in or opt-out must be completed prior to January 5, 2022.

• Option 1: Opt-out for all legal entities.
  Path: System Admin > Client Properties > Properties > Payroll > Uncheck Enable Year-End Affiliate Integration
• Option 2: Opt-out for a specific legal entity only.
  Path: Org Setup > Org Payroll Setup > Legal Entity

This interface includes only Forms W-2. Forms W-2c, 1099, and 1095-c are not available to download to TurboTax.

See the QE Packet’s ‘Payroll configuration’ for more information and screen captures.

Year-end projects deadlines approaching

Do you have a project that you would like Ceridian to complete between now and January 31? The clock is ticking. It is critical to get these projects submitted and approved as early as possible – just download the new QE Packet and click “Project cut-off dates” in the Table of Contents.

Requesting a project now will help ensure the work is completed in a timely manner and delivered for the payroll run you desire. Requests submitted after the published year-end cutoff date are not guaranteed to be completed during the year-end timeframe. Questions or concerns related to your specific project can be included with the project submission. Submit first and figure out the fine points later – just don’t be late.

Retiree or contractor legal entity set up

To have a retiree or contractor legal entity set up, go to the Ceridian Customer Community and submit a request. The deadline was September 17; however, every effort will be made to accommodate late requests. To speed up the process, supply as much information as possible in the request and then promptly answer questions relating to your project.

Deceased employees’ Forms 1099M are automatically filed on your behalf. Whether the employee beneficiaries were paid during the year in which the employee died or in the following year, these wages must be reported to the IRS on Form 1099M.

The 1099 Management Report displays data that will print on the Form 1099. After March, the reports create automatically with each pay run. The report can also be manually generated at any time from the Year End module (after you have Generated Preview Data).

Path: Year End > USA Year End > Overview > Reports > W-2 Management Report

Important: Ceridian will print and file all Form 1099-MISC that are displayed in the Year-End tab in the Dayforce system.

See the KB article, “Paying a Deceased Employee (US)”

Note: If the employer made the payment after the year of the employee’s death, the wages would not be subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes and would not be shown on Form W-2. By default, 1099-MISC are filed by our partner D2xchange on behalf of our customers (unless the customer has opted out of this service).

Information about final payments to deceased employees can be found here.

The Coronavirus, Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) allowed employers to defer the deposit and payment of the employer's share of Social Security taxes and self-employed individuals to defer payment of certain self-employment taxes between March 27 and December 31, 2020.

If your company participated in this program last year, you must repay 50% of the deferral amount before this year is over. The remaining 50% is due at the end of next year.

Steps:

• Calculate how much was deferred for each quarter in 2020.
  A separate payment is needed for each quarter in which the taxes were deferred. If the funds are allocated incorrectly between the quarters, then there will be an overpayment for one quarter with an underpayment for another quarter. This will incur IRS penalties.
• Divide the amount deferred in each quarter by 50%.
  This is the amount due this year.
• Open a case in the Customer Community no later than December 10, 2021.
  Include the period and the amount to be paid for each.

Q4 is already a hectic time of year so begin this process right away.

Did you already repay your deferred taxes directly to the IRS? Ceridian is tracking these deferrals as part of our Tax Services. Open a case the Customer Community and include both the period and the amount paid. This will take your company off our notification list.