It is a busy time for church treasurers in January as you begin preparing for tax reporting this month. This is the first post of the year (and the first for this new blog) so I am posting a list of a few helpful hints for you at this time of year:

Pastors and employees of churches should receive a W-2 reporting their taxable wages on or before Jan. 31. Pastors receive W-2s, not 1099s.

Christmas gifts or love offerings paid to pastors or other employees of a church through the church accounts are taxable and should be included on the W-2s.

Clergy pastors are self-employed for social security purposes – this means you do not report social security wages on their W-2s.

If your church pays a housing allowance to the pastor, the IRS requires you to have a housing allowance exclusion resolution in place. If you do not have one, you need to take care of it right away since they cannot be applied retroactively.

Clergy tax reporting is very different from reporting for lay employees. We have resources on our website under Training Materials to help with completing the forms. Churches are not exempt from payroll tax reporting!

In some tax-related good news, we are happy that the charitable deduction survived the fiscal cliff negotiations! For now, individuals can still deduct donations to charities up to certain limits. This will probably be back in the spotlight as Congress considers the debt ceiling over the next couple of months.

In some tax-related other news, the temporary tax cut for social security payroll tax for lay employees ended Dec. 31. This tax cut from 2011 and 2012 was not part of the fiscal cliff negotiations and has expired. Effective Jan. 1, 2013, the employee portion of social security tax increases from 4.2% to 6.2%.

Christine