With tax time here, the Internal Revenue Service and the local Small Business Development Center are reminding the public about relatively new employee tax classifications and modifications that could potentially save some companies money — and headaches.

Karen Brehmer, a Twin Cities-based IRS stakeholder liaison, offered a reminder this week to International Falls’ Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which was passed along to its clients, about the fellow federal agency’s Voluntary Classification Settlement Program, which was enacted in October 2011. The program allows business owners to reclassify certain workers from independent contractors to employees for tax reasons and other purposes.

“It’s for business owners who really should have been treating their workers as employees, but they have been treating them as independent contractors instead,” Brehmer wrote in an email passed along to The Journal. “Maybe they were scared to make the change, thinking that we’d audit them for past years, and they would owe lots of tax.”

However, the program allows qualified businesses to make the switch and pay much less in taxes, she said. In exchange, the IRS gets taxpayers who properly treat their workers as employees now and in the future.

The program also could provide relief from employment tax audits “that could go back several years and cost a lot of money,” Brehmer wrote.

SBDC counselors, tax preparers and others should already know about the program, along with any new changes, and explain its benefits, she noted.

There are some new modifications as well to the IRS program. Those include allowing a taxpayer under audit, other than a employment tax audit, to be eligible for it. The program also has a temporary eligibility expansion period through June 30.

For more information, go online to www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Voluntary-Classification-Settlement-Program.

Or for a video presentation, go on the Web to www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Small-Business-Video-and-Audio-Presentations.

SBDCs are part of the U.S. Small Business Administration and located locally at the Koochiching County Economic Development Authority’s office building at 405 Third St.

SBDC provides confidential consultations to people who either want to start a business or strengthen and expand an existing one, according to its website.

Those interested in SBDC’s services can contact professional business consultant Jenny Herman at 283-8585 or via email at jenny@businessupnorth.com.