Important
Information from the ABA Regarding Lawyers Who Accept Credit Card
Payments
New IRS requirements regarding the reporting of
credit card transactions have the potential to negatively impact IOLTA accounts
and lead to ethical violations by lawyers. Here are the key points about
which you may wish to alert members who accept credit card payments:
- Pursuant to the Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008, credit card processing
companies are required to verify and match each merchant’s federal tax
identification number and her legal name with those found on file with the IRS.
An EXACT match is required.
- For the purposes of this requirement, lawyers who accept credit card
payments are considered “merchants.”
- If there is NOT an exact match between the information provided to the credit card processing company and the information on file with the IRS, there are serious consequences:
o Beginning January 2013, the IRS will impose a
28% withholding penalty on all credit card transactions, including those that
the lawyer directs to her IOLTA account.
o If client funds that should be in the IOLTA
account are withheld due to the lawyer’s failure to act and thus are not
available to the client on demand, ethical issues are raised.
- The credit card processing company should have received information from the
IRS if a mismatch occurred and already notified the lawyer of the problem.
However, it is not known if all processing companies have provided such
notice.
- Steps lawyers can take now to avoid an ethical violation in 2013:
o Contact the credit card processor to determine
that a match occurred
o Correct mismatches if informed of one
For more information on
this issue, see https://www.lawpay.com/news/irs60502.pdf
This information was
provided to us by the ABA Commission on IOLTA. If you have questions, please
direct them to Beverly Groudine, staff counsel to the Commission, Beverly.Groudine@americanbar.org.
3 comments:
Congratulations! This is the best thing, Thank you so much for taking the time to share this exciting information.
Will Dispute Lawyers
These figures came from the outside author - which I think was the Ga State Bar. They, however, almost always get it from some other 3rd party. Hugh Wood
There are additional reasons that IOLTA accounts should never be used to receive credit card payments. First, the beneficiary of the account is the State Bar Foundation. Second, if a client disputes a charge, the deposit may be reversed, thereby affecting funds deposited by other clients. If you want to accept credit card charges for funds to be put in trust, perhaps one could designate a "holding account" to receive the funds and delay transfer to the IOLTA account for 60 days, until the credit card company's dispute period has run. (I have not run this by the State Bar for an opinion)
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