I work for a small US company that was acquired last year by a larger publicly traded company in another state. At the time I was a fairly low level employee but we were only like 5 people so I had some equity in the company. Part of the terms of the buyout included to buy out all the employees had in the original company.
This payment (roughly $40,000) was originally scheduled to come through a few months ago but kept getting bumped back until it finally got paid out at the end of last month.
It's worth noting that our new parent company hasn't displayed a whole hell of a lot of competence in general, and their handling of this payout is consistent with that.
They made a payment to me through our payroll company at the end of last month (40k minus a bunch of taxes) They immediately realized there is an error in this initial payment and reversed the payment through the payroll company.
The corrected payment was made a few days later (about the same amount as the first). They did not communicate what was going on very well to us, and it was only when the second payment cleared that I realized there was some sort of an error.
Like a good little boy scout, I immediately reported it to my supervisor, who advised that I escalated to the awareness of our chief financial officer at the parent company, who would know the right person to delegate to fixing the error.
About 6 days later, the financial team at the parent company realized that the end of the month was coming up and therefore so was the end of the quarter. They had the CFO contact me and let me know that they wanted me to wire the money back to the parent company (not the payroll company where the payment was made from) as soon as possible so they would be in the clear for the end of their fiscal quarter. They also sent me emails in bold stating that there was no error made, and also blaming all this on the payroll company.
At this point I realized I was probably either going to get screwed in taxes or screwed by my company, and made an effort to be cautious about the next step I took. The company was hounding me and sending me emails like every 20 minutes to get me to wire the money, as I was trying to find a tax attorney on short notice. I did eventually pay a couple hundred dollars for a tax attorney to basically just email me that if I do run into issues that they would help me out come tax time.
I did what they requested and wired the error payment (minus taxes, about 25k) back to the parent company. I know that anything over 10k gets reported to the IRS, so I'm trying to make sure that I'm protected. I don't know if this was the right decision to make, and I believe that the parent company only has their own interests in mind, and does not give a shit about If I get screwed in taxes or get audited or whatever.
Both payments still show up in my payroll. They have assured me that only the correct payment will be the one that shows up on my W-2 and not both. I don't know that this is the truth, I think they were just saying stuff to get me to wire the money back on time.
Tomorrow is the last day for them to file form 8300, and I've emailed them about it several times now with no response. I'm not sure if that has to be filed for a wire transfer or just cash though. What happens if they don't report it?
How screwed am I? Was I dumb to wire it back to them in this way or am I worried about nothing?
Should I have just kept the money and fled to Mexico? I don't think I want to work for this company anymore anyway.
Submitted August 10, 2023 at 12:43AM by free_cheddar https://ift.tt/TCmky5P
