Re: Paging - How do you receive?

[Barbara Torney <bt42 () COLUMBIA EDU>]

When last we met with the compliance accountants, they told us that only a
portion of the cell phone fee had to be reported as imputed income.  Check
with your advisers.

And when you want people to do email, too, that's a costly add on feature.
Since I only have my work email account tied to my Treo, that is purely
for work; that feature alone is more like $40/month, more than the base
cost of the cell service.

But to get back to the pagers, does anyone use Skytel pagers?  They are
expensive, but are supposed to work when other things don't.  We keep one
of those for the most extreme emergencies.

/bat

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008, Robert Kalal wrote:

> For staffers who don't want to track, report, and reimburse personal use, OSU
> provides the option of taking a university-provided cell phone as taxable
> compensation. The cost the university pays for the plan is added to taxable
> gross income and no records are required.
>
> Bob Kalal
>
>
>
> On Jul 7, 2008, at 1:35 PM, Allison Dolan wrote:
>
> > "Supposedly The IRS has made cell-phones some sort of taxable benefit"
> > Actually, the IRS has always been able to tax 'perks' that they feel are
> > insufficiently work related (e.g. country club memberships, etc.).  Over
> > the past several years, they've looked more closely at cell phone. Given
> > the number of flat rate plans and negotiated contracts, it has been harder
> > to distinguish 'business' from 'personal'.  Some places decided to give
> > employees a flat amount per month (e.g. $20) to cover the 'business' use of
> > the cell.
> >
> > Allison F. Dolan
> > Program Director, Protecting Personally Identifiable Information
> > MIT
> > (617) 252-1461
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jul 7, 2008, at 12:44 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Megan Carney <carn0048 () umn edu> wrote:
> > > > We use pagers so we our cellphones can remain mostly personal. . .the
> > > > University no longer reimburses most people for any portion of their
> > > > cellphone bill.
> > >
> > > We may be moving to a similar situation.  Supposedly The IRS has made
> > > cell-phones some sort of taxable benefit so cellphones which are
> > > supplied by an employer have to be itemized if they are not strictly
> > > controlled.
> > >
> > >
> > > > Also, it's lets us have 'groups'.  We each have an individual pager
> > > > number
> > > > which is kept internally and one number which will page them all and is
> > > > given
> > > > out for emergencies while on call.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
> > > How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
> > > in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"

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 Barbara Torney                                 phone: 212-678-3487
 Director, Administrative Information Services  fax:   212-678-3243
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