Category: Computers and Internet
-
How to deduct 98% of your cell phone bill
A few months ago during tax season I wrote about how changing wireless phone billing practices are having an impact on income tax preparation practices. But I did not realize the extent of that change – and how it directly applied to me – until now. I concluded that I can legitimately deduct 98% of…
-
What is the value of a financial adviser?
One of the surprise lessons of this tax season was learning how many sophisticated and successful clients are paying more than five figures annually for what essentially amount to picking mutual funds. Many of the cases I saw while preparing tax returns were fees paid through Charles Schwab for funds offered in retirement plan accounts…
-
My data management plan
It seems that my small business clients face a perfect storm of unimaginable and varied types of losses on a regular basis. I’ve personally suffered floods, thefts, head injury with amnesia, extended power outages, problems with fluctuating voltages, many hard disk failures, two unexplained SSD drive failures, Microsoft unannounced account cancellation, hacking attacks, human error, etc.…
-
Get the most from your small business accountant
your small business accountant is a primary agent of change Small business management is changing rapidly; more dramatically and at a faster pace than we have ever seen before. As a small business CPA I feel that it is important to help clients forecast the impact, tap into and leverage the benefits whenever possible and minimize the damaging impact of…
-
Mobile scanning apps for taxes and accounting
If you want to handle taxes or accounting on your smartphone or tablet, you need a mobile scanning app installed on your device. The two most popular apps that are completely free, have no premium upgrade option, include optical character recognition, and are available on all cell phone and tablet computer platforms are: Office Lens…
-
“How do I get health insurance?”
Perhaps I should not be so shocked that now only days before the close of 2016 open enrollment season I am still receiving calls from individuals asking basic questions like “How do I get health insurance?” This blog post is simply an outline of the telephone conversation that follows in this situation. Our conversation starts with an…
-
Editor: “My position was eliminated”
Another reminder that the world is changing I received a surprising email this week from a great editor saying “my position was eliminated” and that this was “due to due to a change in the way content will be delivered, declining ad revenues and cost savings through outsourcing”. Our long working association had proved to me that…
-
OnlineAdviser gets a makeover
As I reviewed my first year in business (2015) it was obvious that I had 3 distinct problems with the business model and my personal habits. It was not completely unexpected. I operate a different and largely untested type of accounting practice under the brand name OnlineAdviser that relies almost exclusively on online technologies. While I…
-
New small business support network announcement
NEW FREELANCERS SUPPORT NETWORK IN FORMATION – I am forming a peer-to-peer freelancers support network that is intended to be a closed membership online group of self-employed people whose primary focus and commitment is to help each other in business by sharing information, advice and expertise on an ongoing basis as needed. The atmosphere is…
-
Disaster Recovery as a Service for small businesses
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) can be a cost effective insurance policy for small businesses. Instead of having to buy and maintain separate servers, SAN, storage, network, firewall, rack space, the business can store copies of data and backups of that data on remote cloud-based services. This offers redundant methods of recovery from a wide range…