Author: Tony Novak
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Enough with the immigration lies
Introduction: My background with immigration is working with construction, agricultural and fisheries businesses in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania that use immigrants for the majority of their work force. I know dozens of these workers who came here legally on work visas and are still waiting for their extension paperwork. Ironically, some of them…
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2019 Tax Planning and Support Tools Available
Through our 2019 license agreement with CFS Software, we offer a large number of support forms and estimated tax calculators. If you would benefit from a demonstration of the powers of any of these functions or planning calculations, please let us know. General Utilities and Retirement Calculations: 5 Year Federal/State Tax Planner After-Tax Loan Refinance…
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Simplify the business of life
This blog title is a slogan used by the world’s most popular personal and small business software maker. For my purposes as an adviser, I’m using it here to refer to the accounting for essential financial transactions between an employer and employee: payroll, taxes and employee benefits. Small businesses have wide latitude in some areas of…
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Three changes to small business health plans for 2019
Small business employers who choose to offer health benefits to employees will find more options available in 2019 under rules proposed late last year for adaptation this year. The IRS and Treasury Department clarified that employers who meet other conditions will be allowed to offer reimbursement of individual health insurance on a tax-free basis. These…
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Five economic forecasts for small business in 2019
A decade ago I probably would have said that there is little value to a small business adviser in attempting macroeconomic and political forecasts. But over this most recent decade I’ve watched shifting macroeconomic conditions wipe out over two million dollars of personal net worth and put one of my businesses into idle for over…
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Taxes are our #1 expense
Taxes were my largest expense again in 2018. It’s no surprise. Although I’ve eliminated most income tax, real estate, employment and various state taxes remain. Overall, we Americans spend more on taxes than food, housing and clothing combined. Most of us monitor and plan to control these other expenses but few take any action to…
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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…