Are Employer-Provided Life Insurance Premiums a Taxable Fringe Benefit?

Does your religious institute or a sponsored ministry pay premiums for life insurance for its employees, in whole or in part? Did you know that the portion that the employer pays is a fringe benefit to the employee and may be taxable under the Internal Revenue Code? IRS Publication 15-B (pp. 11-14) discusses fringe benefits and requirements of -- and exceptions to -- taxation. (See excerpt from Pub 15b below.)

If you discover that you and your employees should be paying taxes on this fringe benefit, consult with your payroll department and ask them to help assess the situation. The higher an employee's income and age, the higher the tax liability is likely to be. You may also want to notify your employees that this perk is a fringe benefit and that taxes may have to be withheld.

If there is a tax liability, Medicare and Social Security taxes are required to be withheld, while income tax withholding is optional. Pub 15b explains this nuance. Notification of this taxable fringe benefit and its inclusion in income should be sent to employees before the issuance of 2013 W-2s in January of 2014.

Happy New Year and Fiscal Cliff Averted

We at RCRI want to wish all of our members a very Happy New Year. Our office will reopen tomorrow and we'll dive right into our daily tasks. We look forward to welcoming Brother Larry in March when he joins us as our new Director for Administration and Finance.

Early this morning the Senate voted on measures to avoid the devastating measures that kicked in at midnight. One of the many important changes that came from the bill is that it did NOT renew the 2 percentage point reduction in Social Security taxes that employees have enjoyed for the last two years. So employers must again withhold the entire 6.2 percent from employees' earnings, the same amount that the employer contributes.

Also as a result of the deal to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, the CLASS Act, part of Obamacare, has been  repealed. It would have benefited mostly seniors, but it would also have cost an arm and a leg -- $3000 a month. Republicans and Democrats alike realized the provision was not sustainable, so it is now history.

As we review the the Senate deal and await its passage in the House, we will continue to report on provisions that will affect religious institutes.

Another change in 2013 (not part of the fiscal cliff deal, just a regulation that kicks in today) is that the 75-watt incandescent bulbs is now obsolete. They can no longer be manufactured in nor imported into the United State. Once they are sold out from store shelves, you will not be able to get them in the U.S. Next year  40- and 60-watt incandescent bulbs will follow suit.

Lastly for now, our website password will not change until later this week. Since we are not in the office until tomorrow, we will delay the change for several days. If you have renewed your membership, your contact persons will receive an email containing the new password by the end of Friday's work day. If you have not yet renewed, then you will not be able to access the website when the password changes. When you do renew, you will then receive the password and be able to sign up for upcoming webinars.

We look forward to seeing and hearing from you in the coming year!