Defending the Tip Number: Qualified Tips, the 2026 W-2, and Information Return Penalty Defense

Bozena M. Diaz, Partner | Archer & Greiner, P.C.

Bozena (Bonnie) M. Diaz is a partner at Archer & Greiner, P.C., resident in the firm’s Hackensack, New Jersey office, where her practice spans corporate work and nonprofit and charitable organizations. She has more than twenty years of experience advising on the federal income tax aspects of mergers and acquisitions, spin-offs, and other divestitures. Her work also reaches the tax aspects of business and real estate joint ventures, restructurings, workouts, and reorganizations, along with international tax planning, renewable energy transactions, Qualified Opportunity Zone investments, tax controversy representation, and the design and compliance of qualified retirement plans.

• Education & Credentials

She earned her J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center and her LL.M. from New York University School of Law, following a B.A. from Drew University. She is admitted to practice in New Jersey and New York.

Her court admissions include the United States Tax Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, and the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

• Recognition & Leadership

She serves as a member of the International Tax Committee of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Tax Section. She speaks and writes regularly for practitioner and business audiences: in July and August of 2026 she presented “The New QSBS Landscape Planning Opportunities for Business Owners and Investors,” and her recent articles include “The Tax Break New Jersey Business Owners Can’t Afford to Miss” in SJ Magazine (July 2026) and “Tax Planning: New Exclusions Under New Jersey Gross Income Tax Act” in the Philadelphia Business Journal (May 2026).

• Professional Involvement

She is a member of the Tax Sections of both the New Jersey State Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association, and a member of the American Bar Association. Outside the profession, she serves on the boards of the Sussex County Youth Orchestras and New Jersey Ambassadors of Music.

• Experience

Her transactional practice centers on the federal income tax consequences of mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, and other divestitures, and on structuring business and real estate joint ventures, restructurings, workouts, and reorganizations.

Alongside that transactional work she handles international tax planning, renewable energy transactions, and Qualified Opportunity Zone investments, and she represents clients in tax controversy matters — the footing from which she addresses information return penalties, reasonable cause, and correction sequencing in this program.

SESSION 1 – Coding Qualified Tips on the 2026 W-2: Code TP, the Occupation List, and the Exclusions That Break the Deduction | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session covers the mechanics of reporting qualified tips in Box 12 using Code TP on the 2026 W-2, as required by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), P.L. 119-21, and IRC § 224. Attorneys will learn how to separate qualified tips from service charges, mandatory gratuities, and auto-added surcharges that fall outside § 224; how to apply Treasury’s published list of occupations that customarily and regularly received tips before 2025; how the specified service trade or business exclusion under § 199A(d)(2) disqualifies otherwise-tipped workers; and how the occupation code and allocated-tip reporting interact with the new Box 12 entry. Attendees will leave with a working understanding of the qualified tip calculation, the $25,000 cap and income phase-out, POS and payroll system configuration requirements, and the compliance gap left by the expiration of 2025 transition relief under IRS Notice 2025-62.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – Fighting the Penalty: IRC §§ 6721 and 6722 Abatement, Reasonable Cause, and the W-2c Correction Sequence | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

This session teaches attorneys how to defend and mitigate employer information return penalties arising from incorrect or missing Code TP and Code TT reporting on the 2026 W-2. Attorneys will learn the § 6721 and § 6722 penalty tiers and the intentional disregard exposure that removes the annual cap, the reasonable cause and significant mitigating factor standards under Treas. Reg. § 301.6724-1, how to respond to a Notice 972CG proposed penalty assessment, and the correct sequencing of W-2c filings so that a correction cures rather than compounds the penalty. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for building the reasonable-cause administrative record, evaluating first-time abatement and de minimis correction safe harbors, and advising employers on documented good-faith reporting positions where the guidance remains unsettled.