Author: Tony Novak
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Turn employee health expenses into tax savings
Small business employers who do not offer an employee health plan are missing out on valuable tax savings. These small firms may be understandably nervous about offering employee health benefits. Less than half of small firms even try. We’ve heard about high costs of medical care and health insurance that rise year after year. This cab be…
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Avoid taxes on a ‘once in a lifetime’ transaction
Many of us will face a ‘once in a lifetime’ or ‘once in a long time’ event like the sale of a business or a family vacation home. The tax impact can be significant. All to often, owners ask about taxes after it is too late to make a difference. Sometimes, however, a client plans…
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LIFT (Livable Incomes for Families Today) the Middle Class Act
California Senator Kamala Harris, ranked as one of the top 2020 possible presidential candidates, proposed repealing the 2017 tax reform law and replacing it with a $6,000 tax credit or direct payment to middle-class and poor individuals and families. After reading the press release from a Harris’ office, I felt that this plan made more sense than…
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A simple view of the 20% pass through deduction
A business friend asked a simple question online: “What doe the pass-through deduction mean to me?” The collective response was so vague and convoluted that I felt sorry for her for asking. After thinking about it, there are two things that are uncertain and one that is certain about the pass-through deduction that directly address…
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Review of Lenovo T580 ThinkPad laptop for tax practice
Last month I purchased a T580 ThinkPad Laptop Machine Type Model 20L9CTO1WW, directly from Lenovo at a price of about $1,500 as customized, with tax and delivered. The machine is meant to be my primary accounting practice machine. This is my first ThinkPad after about 20 years of using comparable but less expensive primarily HP…
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Tax Reform 2.0 update
This is a bullet point overview of the “Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018” (HR 6760), the “Family Savings Act of 2018” (HR 6757) and the “American Innovation Act” (HR 6756), that are collectively referred to as “Tax Reform 2.0” as passed by the House of Representatives on September 27-28, 2018.…
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New Jersey real estate tax credit program made simple
This post attempts to list in simplified wording what we know and what we don’t know about New Jersey’s new real estate tax credit program. What we know: 1. In May of 2018 the tax credit program became law, even though most details of its operation were missing. 2. The program allows taxpayers to take…
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Which version of QuickBooks is right for your business?
This post and pricing information is now out of date. Sometimes it is actually useful or necessary to provide a long explanation to a simple answer. I find that is often the case when recommending an accounting system to a small business owner. The best answer for most small businesses is simple and clear. The…
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PDF document handling in 2018
The Internal Revenue Service, state revenue departments and many other branches of government and industry rely heavily on the Portable Document File (PDF) format handling electronic documents. It follows then, that a tax professional needs to be up-to-date in handling PDFs with maximum security and efficiency. According to Wikipedia, the Portable Document Format (PDF) is a…