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H&S Team Member Community Involvement

January 4, 2022/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

Did you know that H&S team members serve on over 20+ non-profit boards all across Michigan? We are so thankful to be a team made up of such amazing people!

Jack Hendon: Newaygo County Area Promise Zone & Spectrum Gerber Hospital Foundation

The Newaygo County Area Promise Zone provides high school graduates with a tuition-free path to an associate degree from at least one institution. They believe every student, regardless of financial means, should have the opportunity to earn post-secondary credentials.
Spectrum Health Gerber Memorial has been an integral part of the Newaygo County community for more than 90 years. It is a major resource for those who need emergency medical treatments, scheduled surgeries, diagnostic procedures or labor and delivery services. It is also a comfort for those recuperating in their homes.

Jennifer Feuerstein: Gladwin Business and Professional Association

The Gladwin Business and Professional Association is organized exclusively to promote the business development of the City of Gladwin and the adjacent business areas and to cooperate with other businesses and civic groups in promoting the same endeavors.

Kelly Wagenmaker: True North Community Services & Camp Newaygo Advisory Board

TrueNorth Community Services is a private, nonprofit organization supported through individual donations, foundations and grants, and funding from the federal government and the State of Michigan. They provide a variety of programs and services throughout all of Michigan, offering more than 80 comprehensive programs and services that fall within four core areas of focus (addressing rural poverty, ensuring youth thrive, building vibrant communities, and providing innovative rural nonprofit leadership)
Camp Newaygo is a year-round program, conference, and retreat facility. They offer summer programs, year-round rentals, community events, and innovative family programs on our beautiful 104 acres. They believe every child should have a safe place to grow into their best self.

Michelin Scramlin: Grand Rapids Jaycees Foundation

The Grand Rapids Jaycees Foundation, chartered in 1983, works to contribute to the welfare of our local community working to build stronger non-profit organizations throughout the community through charitable contributions, providing non-financial resources and developing of community leaders. The Grand Rapids Jaycees Foundation is committed to strengthening the community by giving… building… leading.

Katie Hardy: The Hume Home

The Hume Home serves Muskegon, Roosevelt Park and Muskegon Heights with excellent, affordable senior living including assisted living, independent living and memory care services.

Brian Ross: Isabella Citizens for Health, Commemorative Bucks of Michigan, ICE Arena & Morey Courts

Isabella Citizens for Health, Inc. is a not-for-profit health care organization for the purpose of building a Federally Qualified Health Center in Isabella County. Their mission is to provide the highest level of health care, yielding an improved quality of life in Isabella County and surrounding areas, through assured access to team-based primary care. Isabella Citizens for Health, Inc. provides the full complement of primary health care services across all life cycles. The center offers services to all people regardless of insurance status and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, socio-economic status, marital status, religion, gender, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, housing status, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental handicap or disability, age, family status, veteran status, or any other protected status.
Commemorative Bucks of Michigan is a non-profit organization that measures and maintains records on trophy class Whitetail Deer, Black Bear, Elk and Turkeys, taken by fair chase in the state of Michigan. The B&C system is used to score harvested animals.
The Martin Arena is managed by Smooth Surfaces, Ltd. We are a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide a safe and pleasant facility and environment for ice activities and programs that benefit all citizens of Isabella County.
Morey Courts Recreation Center is a regional anomaly; while our premier function is to offer opportunities for sports and recreation, wellness, fellowship, and fitness to Mount Pleasant, and surrounding areas, we are multifaceted in our day-to-day business operations. Morey Courts has the capacity to offer a multitude of opportunities and experiences, across many diverse industries, at any given point in time. Morey Courts values the principles of inclusivity and equity, and it is an important component to our business’s mission statement to provide programs for all demographics within the community. From inviting service animals to train in our facility, to housing multiple programs that help build career skills for individuals who are differently-abled, Morey Courts is an inclusive space for everyone.

Hilary Smith: 20 Liters

20 Liters is a Grand Rapids organization that is committed to helping make dirty water clean for vulnerable populations in Rwanda through innovative and sustainable solutions like rain harvest systems, community filters and empowering/training locals.

Rolly Reed: Fremont Area Community Foundation

The Community Foundation exists to improve the quality of life for residents in Newaygo County. They do this by connecting community needs with the passions of families, businesses, and individuals. They strive to make deep community investments by concentrating on the most pressing needs in Newaygo County. Our work is focused in three areas: Education, Community and Economic Development, and Poverty to Prosperity

Jeff Buursma: Camp Roger & Rescue One

Camp Roger’s ministry was founded on the same principles that we live by today. Our mission is for camp to be a place where we can encounter and celebrate God’s love for his children through relationships and experiences in Creation. It rings loud and clear through the echoes of laughter on the trails, the splash of swimmers at Little Bostwick or Lake Gordon, and in sweet voices singing together in praise to our God. We love our camps and want you to feel at homehere whether you are dropping off a student for outdoor education, picking up a child from a week at camp, or participating in a retreat with your group in our beautiful woods.
Rescue One in Haiti partners with Haitian Christian churches to provide education, school supplies, a daily meal, and compassionate care for vulnerable children. We seek to give these children a bright future and introduce them to a loving Lord. Connecting these poor children and their families to our church partners may keep them out of the restavec (child slavery) system.

Paul Lothschutz: Grand Rapids Children Museum

We are an environment for play. We advocate for the value of play. We build minds through play. Play is essential for healthy development. Play has the power to transform. Play benefits all ages. Everyone has the right to play. Play benefits families.

Jake Kraley: Newaygo County Council for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect

To help prevent child abuse and neglect through education, child advocacy, direct service programs and collaborative projects. NCPCA has been in operation since 1985. We have provided needs based services within the county to help fill gaps in programming. Some of the programs we offer include Kids Have Rights, Safe Kids, Safe Sleep, and Summer Programs

Katie Mason: Greater Muskegon Economic Development, a nonprofit organization in Muskegon County

Greater Muskegon Economic Development is a non-profit focused on supporting local businesses with coordinating grant opportunities, providing financial assistance, workforce training, and much more

Scott Hunt: Lakeshore Brewers Guild

The Lakeshore Brewers Guild intends to promote the local craft beer industry and the lakeshore’s natural beauty. As a supplement to the Michigan Brewers Guild, the Lakeshore Brewers Guild will only focus on counties that touch Lake Michigan. Throughout these counties, the Guild will work with its members to build the “Lakeshore Ale Trail,” a region rich in craft breweries, natural beauty, and the economic benefits that flow from successful locally-owned and oriented businesses. Joint advertisement and cooperative support will allow Guild members to grow while also establishing the region as a “beer tourism” hotspot. Through these collaborative efforts, the Lakeshore Brewers Guild hopes to become a driving force in supporting both its members and local economies.

Sydney Bollaert: 20 Liters

20 Liters is a Grand Rapids organization that is committed to helping make dirty water clean for vulnerable populations in Rwanda through innovative and sustainable solutions like rain harvest systems, community filters and empowering/training locals.

Jared Bollaert: Chandler Woods Charter Academy

Chandler Woods is a charter school in Belmont that works to create endless opportunities, inspire students to excel academically and creatively, and to be prepared for wherever life brings them.

The Importance of Cyber Security

September 16, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

Effective IT security is a vital part of a business, and cannot be an afterthought. H&S Computers works to provide comprehensive solutions to decrease the risks of cyber security attacks and has measures in place for when these attacks are successful. Below is an example of that, H&S Computers was able to respond to a threat and resolve the issue without any down time at the business or loss of data,

On Saturday we received alerts from H&S Computers monitoring software regarding some problems with a client’s servers. We connected to the servers and discovered they had been infected with ransomware. All of their data was encrypted and inaccessible.

The client was notified and we began reviewing the servers. We found a port in their firewall had be inadvertently opened, exposing a server to the Internet. The hacker was able to connect to network and began encrypting the data on the servers.

Ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated as hackers attempt to encrypt both the data and backup, making recovery impossible. Fortunately, the backup system H&S Computers uses is an air-gapped backup, meaning once data is backed up, it is impossible to delete or alter the backup files from the original system.

We began restoring the client’s servers to a spare server they use for disaster recovery. The restoration took about 24 hours to complete. We met at the client’s location first thing Monday morning with the recovered servers. They booted them up and the client’s employees were able to connect to all of their systems with no loss of data and no down time at work.

This event highlights a couple important IT topics and questions that should be asked to lower your risk of a hacker attack:

Secure backups. Are you backing up your data regularly? Where are the backups being stored? It is vitally important that the backup system used has offsite storage and cannot be modified from the original system. Hackers know that if they control both a company’s data and backups, that company will be forced to pay the ransom to retrieve their data.
Monitoring. Do you have a system for monitoring your servers? Without monitoring software, we would not have been alerted to the problem until the employees started working on Monday and discovered they couldn’t access their data. This would have resulted in downtime for the client.
Periodic review of IT systems. When was the last time your IT system was reviewed? Do you have regular IT system checks setup? Do you have a protocol for when issues are detected? While reviewing the client’s firewall, we found other ports that were open that should not have been. Those were closed to prevent future breaches.

Have questions or want to learn more? Reach out to us at contactus@hscompanies.com

IRS announces two new online tools to help families manage Child Tax Credit payments…

June 22, 2021/in Newsletters, Press Releases, Tax Tips, Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

Clients & friends, today the IRS announced two new online tools families can use to help manage their Child Tax Credit payments.

There is now a portal to unenroll from advance payments on the child tax credit. Also note that for those who are married, both spouses will need to unenroll.

For all the details, please click the link below! And as always, feel free to reach out to your CPA or tax professional at H&S with any questions!

Click here to read more!

The IRS provides updated information on advance Child Tax Credit payments

June 8, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

The IRS announced yesterday that they have provided updated information on the 2021 advance payments of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), including that it has started sending letters to families whom they believe may be eligible for the payments.

Background-child tax credit. Taxpayers are allowed a CTC-temporarily expanded and made refundable for 2021 by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP Plan or ARPA, PL 117-2, 3/11/2021)-for each qualifying child. The credit phases out for taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes (over certain thresholds).

For 2021, a qualifying child with respect to a taxpayer is defined as an under-age-18 child, whom the taxpayer may claim as a dependent (i.e., a child related to the taxpayer who, generally, lived with the taxpayer for at least six months during the year), and who is a U.S. citizen or national, or a U.S. resident.

Background-advance payments of CTC. The IRS is required to establish a program to make periodic advance payments which in total equal 50% of the IRS’s estimate of the eligible taxpayer’s 2021 CTCs, during the period July 2021 through December 2021.

In IR 2021-113, the IRS provided information about the advance payments including that they will begin on July 15, 2021. Thereafter, they will be made on the 15th of each month unless the 15th falls on a weekend or holiday.

The IRS provided updated advance payment information. They have now provided the following additional information:

The IRS is sending letters to families who may be eligible based on information they included in either their 2019 or 2020 federal income tax return or who used the Non-Filers tool on IRS.gov last year to register for an Economic Impact Payment.
Families who are eligible for advance CTC payments will receive a second, personalized letter listing an estimate of their monthly payment.
The IRS will issue advance CTC payments on July 15, August 13, September 15, October 15, November 15, and December 15.
Throughout the summer, the IRS will be adding additional tools and online resources to help with the advance CTC. For example:
- A tool that will enable families to unenroll from receiving these advance payments and instead receive the full amount of the credit when they file their 2021 return next year.
- An interactive CTC eligibility tool to help families determine whether they qualify for the advance CTC payments.
- The Child Tax Credit Update Portal, which will initially enable anyone who has been determined to be eligible for advance payments unenroll/ to opt out of the advance payment program. Later this year, individuals and families will also be able to use the portal to notify IRS of changes in their income, filing status, or number of qualifying children; update their direct deposit information; and make other changes to ensure they are receiving the right amount as quickly as possible. More details will be available soon about the online Child Tax Credit Update Portal.

IRS processes returns of taxpayers who paid tax on 2020 unemployment comp

June 8, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

In a June 4, 2021 News Release, the IRS announced that it has begun processing returns of taxpayers who paid tax on their 2020 unemployment compensation that, as a result of 2021 legislation, was not taxable.

Background-2020 unemployment compensation exclusion. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP Plan or ARPA) provides that, for taxpayers whose 2020 modified adjusted gross income is less than $150,000, the first $10,200 of unemployment compensation received in 2020 is not included in the taxpayer’s 2020 gross income. In the case of a joint return, the first $10,200 per spouse is not included in gross income. (Code Sec. 85(c)(1))

In IR 2021-71, the IRS announced that, for those taxpayers who had already filed their 2020 return and figured their 2020 tax based on the full amount of unemployment compensation received in 2020, IRS would determine the correct taxable amount of unemployment compensation and tax. Any resulting overpayment of tax would be either refunded or applied to other outstanding taxes owed.

IRS has begun processing the returns. IRS has announced that it is processing these 2020 returns and that, during the week of June 4, 2021, it sent more than 2.8 million refunds to filers of these returns.

IRS also noted:

So far, the IRS has identified 13 million taxpayers that may be eligible for the adjustment that resulted from the ARPA provision.
The IRS is also making corrections for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Premium Tax Credit and Recovery Rebate Credit affected by the exclusion.
Taxpayers who have qualifying children and who become eligible for EITC after the exclusion is calculated may have to file an amended return to claim any new benefits. The IRS can adjust tax returns for those who are single with no children and who become eligible for EITC. They can also adjust tax returns where EITC was claimed and qualifying children identified.
They plan to issue the next set of refunds in mid-June. The review of returns and processing corrections will continue during the summer as the IRS continues to review the simplest returns and then turns to more complex returns.
Taxpayers will receive letters from the IRS, generally within 30 days of the adjustment, informing them of what kind of adjustment was made (such as refund, payment of IRS debt payment, or payment offset for other authorized debts) and the amount of the adjustment.

IRS has begun reviewing tax returns for unemployment compensation exclusion

May 18, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

The IRS has started reviewing 2020 income tax returns of eligible individuals who reported unemployment compensation, but did not claim the unemployment compensation exclusion provided by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA or ARP Act, PL 117-2). Individuals who paid taxes on unemployment compensation that should have been excluded from their income will begin receiving
refunds the week of May 17.

Background. Generally, an individual’s gross income includes unemployment compensation. ( Code Sec. 85(a) )However, for 2020, the ARP Act allows individuals to exclude from income up to $10,200 of unemployment compensation. For married individuals filing a joint return, this exclusion is up to $10,200 per spouse (“unemployment compensation exclusion”).

To qualify for the unemployment compensation exclusion, adjusted gross income (AGI) must be less than $150,000. This threshold applies to all filing statuses, i.e, it does not double to $300,000 for married individuals filing a joint return. Any unemployment compensation over $10,200 ($10,200 per spouse if married filing jointly) must be included on the tax return as taxable income.

IRS reviewing returns. The IRS has identified over 10 million individuals who reported unemployment compensation and filed their 2020 tax returns before ARPA was enacted in March 2021. The IRS is reviewing these tax returns, in phases, to determine the correct taxable amount of unemployment compensation and tax.

Phase one, which is underway, includes the simplest returns (single taxpayers who did not claim children or any refundable tax credits).

Phase two, which will begin after Phase one is complete, will include more complex tax returns such as those of couples filing as married filing jointly.

The IRS anticipates that it will take through the end of the summer to review and correct Phase two returns.

As part of its review process, the IRS will correct any claimed Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for individuals and couples without children, and the Recovery Rebate Credit.

However, taxpayers who, after the unemployment compensation exclusion is applied to their return, are now eligible for certain income-based tax credits not claimed on their original return (such as couples with qualifying children who, as a result of the exclusion, became eligible to claim the EITC) should file an amended tax return to claim those credits.

IRS will issue refunds when appropriate. After reviewing a return, the IRS will make any corrections related to the unemployment compensation exclusion automatically. The IRS will then issue any refunds resulting from its review of, and corrections to, a taxpayer’s 2020 return.

Refunds will be issued via direct deposit for taxpayers who provided bank account information on their 2020 return. If bank account information is not available (or isn’t valid), any refund will be mailed as a paper check to the taxpayers’ address of record.

The IRS will also send taxpayers a notice explaining any corrections the IRS made to their 2020 return. Taxpayers should keep any notices they receive for their records. The IRS says that taxpayers should receive these notices within 30 days of the IRS making a correction to their return.

Refunds subject to offset. Any refunds issued as a result of the IRS’s review of and corrections to a taxpayer’s return are subject to normal offsets, such as past-due federal tax, state income tax, state unemployment compensation debts, child support, spousal support, or certain federal nontax debts (i.e., student loans). The IRS will send a separate notice to the taxpayer if the refund is offset to pay unpaid debts.

Click here to read the full article

Where’s my tax refund? Americans face delays as IRS holds nearly 30M tax returns for manual processing

April 26, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

The Internal Revenue Service is holding 29 million tax returns for manual processing, contributing to more refund delays than are typical in a normal filing season due to sweeping tax code changes, limited resources, outdated IT systems and a backlog of unprocessed 2019 paper tax returns, according to Erin Collins, the National Taxpayer Advocate.

“As one would expect, IRS employees are stretched thin working through the manual processing of these returns,” Collins said Wednesday. “So if a taxpayer’s return is pulled for manual processing, there will be delays.”

Typically, the IRS sends most refunds within 21 days or less of taxpayers filing their return. But for some early filers, the wait for a tax refund has been six weeks to eight weeks already.

Click here for more details.

IRS announces further details of tax credits available to help small businesses…

April 22, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department announced further details of tax credits available under the American Rescue Plan to help small businesses, including providing paid leave for employees receiving COVID-19 vaccinations.

The additional details, provided in a fact sheet, spell out some basic facts about the employers eligible for the tax credits. It also provides information on how these employers may claim the credit for leave paid to employees related to COVID-19 vaccinations.

Eligible employers, such as businesses and tax-exempt organizations with fewer than 500 employees and certain governmental employers, can receive a tax credit for providing paid time off for each employee receiving the vaccine and for any time needed to recover from the vaccine. For example, if an eligible employer offers employees a paid day off in order to get vaccinated, the employer can receive a tax credit equal to the wages paid to employees for that day (up to certain limits).

Click here to read the full article

Small businesses have until May 31 to apply for a forgivable loan

April 1, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

On Tuesday, President Biden signed into law a two-month extension of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) one day before the coronavirus relief fund was poised to expire, giving small businesses until May 31 to apply for a forgivable loan. Click here for more details.

IRS to recalculate taxes on unemployment benefits…

April 1, 2021/in Uncategorized/by Stephanie Hendon

Dear Clients & Friends, the IRS has announced that they will start sending out the refunds in May for recalculated unemployment returns that have been filed. Click here to read more.

As always, please feel free to reach out to your H&S tax professional with any questions!