What is it?
The Empowerment Zone Employment Credit lets you claim a credit against your Federal taxes of up to 20% of the annual wages paid to each qualified employee or new hire, up to a maximum of $3,000 per employee per year.

Where are the Empowerment Zones?
California’s designated Empowerment Zones include communities in Fresno, Los Angeles, and
Santa Ana.

Who counts as a ‘qualified employee’?
Qualified employees must live and work in the Empowerment Zone in which your business is located. They can be full-time or part-time.

How can you benefit?
The Empowerment Zone Employment Credit is in effect until the end of 2011. This means that you can claim up to $3,000 for each qualified employee, each year until then. What’s more, it is not too late to change your tax returns for the previous three years and recapture the credits to which you are entitled. The earlier you claim the tax incentives that apply to you, the more your business will benefit.

Universal Tax Services will review your historic tax returns and handle all of the paperwork necessary to help you minimize your current and future tax liability and receive a cash refund for the tax credits you could have claimed over the past three years. Using the tax credits they have already earned, some of our clients will not need to pay Federal taxes for many years.

“When Universal Tax Services approached me in 2002, my family’s firm had been in the garment manufacturing business in Los Angeles for 13 years but we had never claimed the Federal Employment Credit for any of our 168 employees. With the help of our Universal Tax Services consultant, we amended our last three tax returns to claim a minimum of $35,000 each year and have a strategy that will help us to minimize our Federal tax liability going forward.”
Eli Kahen, Co-owner, Embroidery Industries, Los Angeles