Category: Small Business
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US Supreme Court’s Mount Lemmon Fire District case impact on small business employee benefits
The US Supreme Court decision issued last week in the case of Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido et at. appears to have employee benefit implication to some small business. In general, federal employment laws and specifically employee benefit laws, include applicability provisions that often exempt small business employers or modify the compliance requirements. This case…
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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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Online support groups; the concept revisited
My business was boosted incredibly by online support groups for decades. In fact, I can easily say that my past businesses like Medsave (sold in 2008) and OnlineAdviser / OnlineNavigator (no longer active), would not have been successful on building to tens of thousands of users in the 1990s and early 2000s without this online peer…
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Reasons for an employer to improve employee benefits
Most of my employee benefit comments focus on effects to the employee. This post briefly lists some of the advantages to the employer. Shows that the employer is ‘in tune’ with employees’ lives. Helps to attract and retain good employees. Employees making decisions on employment offers often overweight the importance of employee benefit issues vs.…
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Responding to false tax and accounting advice
I ran across a social media post tonight that was blatantly false. What’s the big deal? We see that every day, right? This specific post on LinkedIn bothered me because the topic was IRS taxes. The post provides entirely incorrect information that a non-professional reader would not likely recognize as false. The author lists advanced…
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20 Simple and Inexpensive Things You Can Do to Improve Your Firm’s Employee Benefit Plan
There are likely plenty of easy ways to make your employee benefit plan dollars go further: Host an occasional, informal and voluntary on-site meeting where employees can ask an independent adviser questions about their benefits. Host occasional, informal and voluntary on-site educational programs so employees understand the link between benefit plans, taxes and their overall…
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The most important tax tip of the year
Take advantage of the most generous part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, known as Section 199A by; 1) Exploring whether your business CAN benefit, and 2) Settling protocol to make sure that your business DOES qualify based on the 184 pages of proposed regulations just released this month. The important thing is to…
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Three QuickBooks insights
Intuit is the world’s leading publisher of tax and accounting software. The company offers both self-serve and professionally assisted platforms. These published insights are useful: 1. QuickBooks dominates QuickBooks is used by 82% of small businesses that use accounting software. The market dominance speaks for itself, 2. Small business prefer getting help Nine out of…