Fish and chips. Batman and Robin. Steak and eggs. Hall and Oates. Bacon and…everything.
Some things are good all on their own: sink your teeth into a chunk of velvety milk chocolate or slip a spoonful of creamy peanut butter across your tongue. Yum. Now put them together…and you’ve got a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. “Two great tastes that taste great together.”
And sometimes they’re just better together.
And so it goes for Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) screening and applicant tracking systems (ATS) – two great benefits that work great together. Separately they stand on their own as valuable business elements. But together they form a dynamic duo of efficiency and consistency for any organization looking to streamline their HR and employment tax credit processes.
The WOTC at Work
The federal WOTC obliges companies tax credits between $1,200 to $9,600 when they hire employees from any one of 14 target groups, including veterans, SNAP (food stamp) recipients, and the long-term unemployed. Additionally, the WOTC can offset the employer’s income tax liability and counteract the company’s Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
‘WHO WHO’ are My WOTC Qualified Workers?
Businesses have driven the WOTC into popularity as one of the most widely used employment tax incentives today. Pursued diligently and appropriately, the tax incentive can help a company reduced income tax liability and use the recuperated revenue to help fund new-hire training costs and other business expenses.
Teaming up with ATS
The crux of attaining maximum credits resides in securing accurate eligibility data for all new hires - both for an authentic count of qualifying employees and to ensure the paperwork meets all requirements for approval. And this is where the WOTC integration with an ATS comes in.
Depending on your service provider, you may have the questions from WOTC form 8850 and form 9061 embedded directly in the user-interface of your online ATS application portal as part of your onboarding process. Data can then be sent directly to WOTC-provider servers, lightening the load for your HR department.
Here are just a few of the benefits that WOTC screening and ATS integration provides:
- Facilitates full employee participation
- Boosts speed of form delivery and receipt
- Helps reduce human errors, such as late or missed submissions
- Ensures all candidates receive surveys, thus avoiding potential discrimination issues
- Eliminates opportunities for employees to lose documents “in the shuffle”
- Provides real-time status reporting for qualifying candidates
- Allows for electronic signature
- Eases the burden on HR personnel
Team Up with a Tax Specialist
The WOTC can go to work for companies as a viable and productive means of reducing income tax liability and saving substantially. No business should overlook its possibilities, nor should they bypass the opportunity to power the process and lighten the load with an ATS provider that streamlines the process through WOTC integration.
With such a wide selection of target groups and strict form compliancy, WOTC may seem intimidating to organizations just tasting the employment incentive for the first time. To be sure you’ve covered all the critical areas appropriately, consider enlisting the help of a tax specialist for maximum credit claims.
