With more and more companies allowing their employees to work from home, more and more parents are forgoing the traditional office work environment and choosing to work from their home office. This can provide many benefits, but it can also be a bit of a challenge when it comes to nanny services. Finding a nanny that is ok with navigating the ins and outs of doing her job while the parent is still at home can sometimes be difficult, because it’s unique and many times requires working around different house rules. Here are some tips that can help when you nanny for a work-from-home parent.

If you’re a senior caregiver or nanny and you’re unemployed indefinitely, you can qualify for unemployment benefits. If you’re looking for temporary work but are afraid of losing your unemployment benefits, here is some helpful information that can help you determine if you can take temporary work assignments but keep receiving unemployment benefits.

Nannying.

That weird profession where you're required to love a child beyond comprehension, and yet keep them at arms length and not get "too attached" to remain professional.

When an organization changes — whether it’s something as drastic as a merger or as seemingly innocuous as a new software system — employees may feel threatened. People tend to desire stability and order as opposed to disruption and uncertainty. This is equally as true in household employment as it is in a corporate setting. Think your nanny isn’t nervous about your move to a new home or addition of another child?

We live over whelmed by the Disney-style images of an idealized life, where love stories end when the couple gets married and they “live happily ever after”.  Have you ever questioned what “ever after” really means?  Let me tell you … it means we buy a house, pay bills, and have arguments over the remote control.  Eventually, we become parents, and time seems to start running against us!  

What 2017 tax records can you toss once you’ve filed your 2017 return? The answer is simple: none. You need to hold on to all of your 2017 tax records for now. But it’s the perfect time to go through old tax records and see what you can discard.

Summer will be here before you know it and that means that kids are out of school and ready for some relaxation and fun. If you continue to work full time during the summer, you must find reliable childcare for your kids during the duration of the summer. Finding a summer nanny could be something that you’ve never had to do before. It’s important to note that hiring a nanny for the summer is different than paying a babysitter for services occasionally. Hiring a summer nanny means you’re officially a household employer and with that, comes some rules that you’ll have to adhere to.

If you have a new nanny or senior caregiver, it’s important that you have a reliable way to keep track of their hours worked. Accurate, contemporaneous time tracking will protect you as an employer from unpaid wage and overtime complaints and it will also ensure that the nanny or caregiver is paid for all their hours. Here are some free employee time clock apps that can help.

Disclaimer: HomeWork Solutions employees are experts in Employment Taxes, not personal income taxes. That said, we see these forms every day. If you have specific questions please see your personal tax accountant for more 2018 W-4 help.

First off, here is a link to the IRS maintained version of the Form W-4.

This new version has substantial changes. Even some elements that haven’t changed have been rearranged on the new 2018 federal W-4 form. Starting from the top we do see some familiar things (provided you’ve read the “fine print” of the form before). The general instructions haven’t changed much but there are some clarifications about the adjusted child care tax credit as well as credits for other dependents. You’ll notice then that the bottom third of the first page is now the Employee Withholding Allowance Certificate with no allowance worksheet above it. The section is still the same with name, address, social security number, etc. The most important things here are filing status (box 3) and number of allowances (box 5), the same as it has always been. The major difference is that getting to your number of allowances is considerably more difficult.