Category: Accounting
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The proper way for S corporations to report health benefits of shareholders
U.S. federal tax law differentiates the tax accounting methods for employee health benefits from the treatment of self-employed individuals. Operators of small businesses organized as S corporations under state law are considered to the self-employed for income tax reporting but are typically also employees of the S corporation. Employer paid health benefits are most commonly…
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FreshBooks Certified Accountant
I just completed about 4 or 5 hours of accountant training for FreshBooks small business accounting platform. It has some impressive features and I’m sure I’ll write about them soon. The short version of my review: FreshBooks is an excellent choice for sole proprietors who bill for their time. Support is excellent; they are “trying…
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Revenue Ruling 99-6 LLC partnership conversion to disregarded entity
I have a client who is considering converting an LLC that has elected treatment as a partnership to a disregarded entity owned by husband and wife in a community property state. The goal is to simplify accounting and tax reporting while still retaining the liability benefits of the LLC. No information is available as to…
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Tax planning is tough for high income clients
Many people do not realize that tax planning becomes more difficult as income increases. The easy strategies like those discussed in the article “Top 10 easy tax strategies” do not work as well. Tax planning sometimes requires adjusting to rapidly rising income; not such a terrible problem to face. But the tax calculation changes triggered…
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The wrong way to do year-end tax planning
Implementation is the most important part! The Thanksgiving Day online edition of The Wall Street Journal carried an article about year-end tax planning strategies. It caught my attention because this is my favorite part of my own professional practice; a service I look forward to providing in the last quarter of each year. It is…
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So you call yourself a scientist?
A personal reflection on confronting the ethics failures of scientists The manipulation of scientific research that is designed to support a political or financial goals is increasingly becoming a headline issue. Underlying the headlines is the realization that we have an embarrassing and harmful ethics crisis within the scientific community. I grew up in a scientifically focused…
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General power of attorney
General power of attorney forms are useful for a wide range of purposes. They can be customized to specific scope of authority, length of time, and the third party. A sample power of attorney form is attached that I use for individuals and small business clients. Note that this is not a durable power of…
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Email scams about small business accounting
Small business accountants who provide online services report an increase in the number and level of sophistication of various attempted scams presented as business service emails. The emails are typically a purchase confirmation or a request for information about services. I have received a variety of these myself and find it increasingly difficult to separate…
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11 tax traps for small business health plans
The issue starts out innocently enough: a small business employer simply wants to help employees pay for the cost of health care. So the employer voluntary offers to make a payment for that purpose. That’s where the simplicity ends and the tangle of tax laws comes into play. It is far too easy for an employer…
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Retroactive termination of employee benefit plans
Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet! Lately I’ve written that the general rule is that you can not retroactively terminate or amend an employee benefit plan but that under certain circumstances it may be better to do so than not. This is not a topic that lends itself well to a blog post.…