Last spring I had the privilege of presenting on automation of time collection to a group of construction industry professionals at their user group meeting in Wisconsin. The meeting was hosted by Miron Construction at their headquarters in Neenah, Wisconsin.  It was my first trip to the Badger State and I was impressed not only by its beauty and the friendliness of it people but by the progressiveness of the corporation hosting this meeting. 

The Miron Construction corporate headquarters put the word “green” on the map for me.  Their experience in LEED was evident throughout their building.  From the state of the art meeting room that was a corporate meeting room  by day and a community gathering place by night to the common areas to the open space architecture, everywhere you looked  people were encouraged to communicate and exchange ideas.  

The U.S. Congress had so much fun messing around with taxes in 2010 that state and local governments decided to keep on making changes right into 2011. It’s now well into February and a few final updates are still trickling in, so be patient with your accounting and/or payroll vendors! Fortunately the nice folks in Washington extended certain deadlines to help make up for it, so now you just have to convince your employees to wait that long for their first paycheck of the year (we’re kidding, please don’t try this). 

At the heart of the delay is the fact that many states base their taxes on a percentage of the Federal tax - sort of. When Federal taxes change, states don't necessarily want it to impact their revenues, so they simply change the percentage basis used in the calculation.  The more the Feds monkey with the tax code, the more state legislators must scramble to compensate, and the longer we - as in all of us - wait to see what the new code dictates.