New post on: UNF Small Business Blog
With technology making it easier than ever for people to operate a business out of their house, many taxpayers, entrepreneurs and small business people may be able to take a home office deduction when filing their 2009 federal tax return next year.
Here are five important things the IRS wants you to know about claiming the home office deduction.
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New post on: The Entrepreneurial Mind
It now appears that the folks in Washington can’t even manage a tax increase. From the Tax Foundation:
The actual economic costs of the proposed health care surtax and the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will be twice the amount of revenue the government intends to collect. According to a new analysis from the Tax Foundation, the higher tax rates are estimated to raise $88 billion in 2011, but the economy will incur an additional burden of $76 billion–or “deadweight loss”–as a result, which raises the total cost of the tax increases to $164 billion, roughly double what lawmakers intend to raise.
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New post on: American Small Business News
Tax time may not come until April 15th for everyone else, but for the average business owner, it comes four times a year in estimated quarterly taxes. For some people, like residents of California, those taxes can be even more burdensome when income is being paid by the states in I.O.U.s. It’s not surprising they want to pay their taxes with the same financial instrument, but that will require legislation that the state is unlikely to pass. What is an honest business owner to do with these types of dilemmas? They try to find loans, like a merchant advance, to pay the taxes, but there are other strategies that can be just as effective, if not more.
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New post on: What Works for Business Blog
Got employees? If you pay wages, you need to file quarterly IRS Form 941 reports to process tax payments and reconcile withholding. Next deadline: July 31. Don’t sweat it — file the easy way with an online service like FileTaxes.com. I’ve used this web-based tax filing service for years to process 1099s, W-2s and other tax forms, and it’s been a terrific time-saver…and cheap, too.
Forget firing up your own software, printing forms and then mailing them. Banish worries about whether your filing meetings regulations. The FileTaxes service does it for you and provides copies for your records that you can print out or store and access anytime in your online account. All you need to do is enter your summarized payroll data online. 941 Forms are $4.95 each.
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The high tax cost that successful small business owners face is obvious: high income taxes as well as costly payroll taxes. And these burdens could increase significantly under the pending health care bill that would impose a surtax on high-income taxpayers (many of whom are small business owners) as well as a payroll tax on businesses to pay for health care. But there’s a hidden expense that is also very costly to small business: the cost of compliance with tax rules.
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There are about 23 million personal businesses in the U.S. These are sole proprietors, self-employed and other solo entrepreneurs that own and operate what our government calls “non-employer businesses.”
Based on our work in Washington DC, I am confident that the needs of personal businesses were not considered in any meaningful way in the drafting of the legislation.
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More people are becoming self-employed today, many spurred on because of job layoffs. Those who have long been W-2 workers and are new to self-employment may not be aware of the higher tax cost for self-employment. With federal and state income taxes, plus self-employment tax, the tax bill can reach nearly 50% of profits.
Here’s important information you’ll need:
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Abby and Ken Kohut both launched home-based businesses three years ago. Staffing Symphony, Abby Kohut’s recruitment consulting firm, occupies an office in their Springfield home a few steps from the office of Ken Kohut Photography. /span>
“It is a wonderful experience to have your own business,” Abby Kohut said. “But you have to be aware that expenses creep up as the monthly bills come in.” Entrepreneurs tend to underestimate how much things will cost, because “when you work for a company, your phone, cell phone, travel, electricity — they’re all paid for by your employer,” she said. One of the keys to managing a successful home office is figuring out when money should be spent, and when it shouldn’t, she said.
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A few different entities measure how business friendly the 50 states and District of Columbia are, when it comes to taxes. Today let’s take a look at two of those rankings, and why you should care.
Small Business and Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council Business Tax Index
The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council every year rates the 50 states and District of Columbia on how tax friendly their policies are toward small businesses. The SBE’s rankings are here. The map below shows the states (green is friendliest, red is least friendly, and blue is somewhere in the middle):
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The next quarterly deadline for self-employed workers to file estimated taxes is approaching fast. Here’s a survival guide for getting it right.
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) — My name is Rachel Kaufman, and I don’t understand taxes.
I thought I was doing everything right until tax season. That’s when my tax prep software told me I owed thousands of dollars for my small – by all standards – writing business. Thousands I … didn’t exactly have. Sure, I’d been saving some money to pay the IRS, and I thought it’d be enough, but there I was, scrambling to find a hefty chunk of extra cash. About $2,000 extra.
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Yuma Sun Comings/Goings
