Effective January 1, 2014, the Ohio minimum wage will increase by ten cents, from $7.85/hour to $7.95/hour. The Ohio minimum wage for tipped employees increased from $3.83/hour to $3.98/hour.

Obamacare’s rollout dented the Department of Health and Human Services in just the first month. Up next year: the Internal Revenue Service.

If the website headaches weren’t enough, now there appear to be problems with the health care reform tax credits.

The IRS recently updated Publication 509 (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p509.pdf) which lists all the filing due dates for 2014.

Hopefully, you followed some of the suggestions we outlined a couple of years ago in Kick off the New Year... by getting organized! to organize your records. If you did, great! This will make filing your tax returns a lot easier this year. It also means that you and your tax advisor can spend more time on tax and financial planning issues for 2014 vs. looking back to 2013.

We are going to take a break from tax planning this week. Instead, the family of Bradstreet & Company would like to wish you and your family the most joyous holiday season and best wishes for 2014.