Business

The Internal Revenue Service has released instructions to help employers implement the 2011 cut in payroll taxes, along with new income-tax withholding tables that employers will use during 2011.

Millions of workers will see their take-home pay rise during 2011 because the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 provides a 2-percentage point payroll tax cut for employees, reducing their Social Security tax withholding rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent of wages paid.

By Bethel Poston
Several years ago my wife, Carol, and I qualified for a free trip to England and Ireland by buying a large quantity of appliances to sell at our Poston Furniture & Appliance stores.

I like to say we won the trip, but my dad said, “You paid for it in the cost of washers, ranges and refrigerators.”

(We decided to lower our selling prices in order to sell enough to qualify.)

In our travels, after seeing many recognized attractions, we always left the tourist crowd and mixed with the locals.

“I thought someone was playing a trick on me — and I expected to hear it was just a joke.”

That’s how Mark Randolph, a construction worker from Harriman, described how he felt upon learning that his name had been drawn as the winner of this year’s Roane County Chamber of Commerce Shopping Spree.

The Chamber and the Roane County News sponsor the annual shopping spree, with the Roane County News providing the $500 cash prize.

Roane County was among 85 of Tennessee’s 95 counties that experienced a surge in its unemployment rate for
November, according to statistics released late last month by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Though the county’s 7.6-percent November rate was marginally higher than October’s 7.3 percent, Roane County reclaimed its No. 4 spot among counties with the lowest-ranking unemployment figures across the state.