Author: Tony Novak
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The profitable New Year’s resolution you can complete in an hour
Reposted from Freedom Benefits At this time of year we can read plenty of articles giving advice for the next year. The most popular articles seem to focus on how to do more, be better, and rise to new heights. Few of these articles focus on more mundane issues like saving a few minutes on…
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Personal Christmas Trivia
Another off-topic post. Personal Christmas trivia: in 1971 John Lennon recorded “Happy X-mas (War is Over)” in NYC with the Harlem Community Children’s Choir that was meant as a celebratory song. It was meaningful to me in relation to the ending of the draft. Phil Specter released it in the US in time for Christmas…
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Sidetrack: amateur sports ethics
This post is triggered by an unfortunate national news item that happened here in southern New Jersey. I do occasionally publish an off-topic post here. For what it’s worth, I consider myself to be a student of sports ethics. Yes, it is a ‘thing’ with some useful books on the topic. but mostly a topic that…
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Tax Law proves to be damaging: one year analysis
This well-written article by CBS News summarizes the effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on it’s one year anniversary. The results confirm that America’s tax professionals were correct in our earlier criticism. The law’s primary effect is to widen the wealth gap with 10 times the amount of benefit going to investors as…
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Small business payroll fees for 2019
I’m sending this email message to my smallest business payroll clients: In planning for 2019 services, I’ve noticed that payroll processing fees have risen sharply for me. This seems to be an industry trend apparently related to spreading out the cost of state and local tax compliance issues for some companies but doesn’t otherwise affect…
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One QuickBooks Online account for multiple small businesses
A client wants to upgrade his bookkeeping system to QuickBooks Online but was resistant to opening a separate QuickBooks account for each of his small companies. Through a fast screen share, I was able to show him how I use my own QuickBooks account to run several businesses that each report to a separate tax…
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Employee vs. Independent Contractor: protecting the small business employer
The question of independent contractor or an employee has long been a concern to small businesses. The IRS has changed its guidance significantly over the decades of my career. The most current IRS guidance is perhaps the most complex and subject to interpretation. In the small business world, classification as an independent contractor often result…
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Support for NJ minimum wage bill
Update: Thanks to all who supported this effort over the last several years. The $15 minimum wage proposal is now law in New Jersey. I took time this morning to write to the nine members of the NJ Assembly Labor Committee plus our own two Assemblymen and a local Chamber of Commerce that opposes the…
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How to handle the 2019 stock market crash
Update: This article was updated to reflect the news that for or the 90 days of fall (9/21 – 12/21) the S&P 500 was down 17.5%. The market correction happened sooner than I expected. The advice I’ve dispensed for the past 30 years since leaving my early career on Wall Street is timeless, except for…
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How to upgrade your small business payroll in 3 easy steps
How to upgrade your small business payroll in 3 easy steps: Download and sign service agreement from tonynovak.com/payroll. If you have prior payroll this year, get a copy of the Year-To-Date reports. Upload these to the secure portal here. THAT’S IT! We’ll take it from there. At lease one phone call will be necessary to…