Category: Small Business
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Tax aspects of charity through crowdfunding
Crowdfunding as a dominant means of peer-to-peer charity has certainly become a huge social trend with widespread implications. This article discusses how crowdfunding has actually replaced the church’s role in this arena. The removal of a “middleman” or “gatekeeper” to charity funding is a complex social issue, according to those who write about the topic. I ave mixed feelings and…
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How do we handle moral failure in politics?
Trump’s candidacy for President has become a moral issue far beyond political disagreement. Now that he is their candidate to the nation’s highest office, Republican party leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan face the problems of damage control to their party’s brand value as Trump spews out divisive…
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Save money by skipping small business accounting
I have a few small business clients who do not bother with traditional accounting. That is, they do not have a system like QuickBooks or something similar to compile, organize and analyze their financial transaction records in real time. In most cases these are sole proprietors. But in one case an owner of a multi-million dollar sales…
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Successful equity crowdfunding isn’t free
Yesterday I met with a owner of a web site design business who told a story about a person who came to him recently asking for services at no up-front cost simply because he had a good business idea that he felt was sure to be successful. I get some of this same attitude coming from those…
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Changing my political behavior
My lawyer and trusted adviser says that I can’t go around lashing out at everybody and then expect people to cooperate and work with me. It’s not like I have the charisma and charm of a folk singer. I have a tough time remembering that others do not have as high a tolerance for criticism…
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US playing catch-up in small business crowdfunding
Other counties are still ahead of the US in small business crowdfunding. In the first half of 2016 Netherland alone, for example, raised almost $100 million (US) capital for over 700 purposes including small and medium sized businesses, social projects, creative projects and consumer lending. The majority of the capital raised went to small business…
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Insurance mirage
Financial planning textbooks teach us that insurance is the prefered way to reduce the risk of devastating consequences of rare events. Yet real life experience has proven time and again that insurance is unreliable for such an essential purpose. Over 30+ years as a financial adviser and business owner, I can only conclude that purchasing…
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Taxation of crowdfunded transactions
There are five factors that affect the taxation of crowdfunded transactions: location (and possibly citizenship) of the parties organizational form of the issuer and the investor use of the funds timing of the transactions type of offering (debt, equity, purchase or gift) None of the underlying tax issues are complicated but the number of possible combinations…
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Avoid payroll tax penalties!
A small nonprofit company owes almost $1,000 in tax penalties for the second time in 3 years because of lack of coordination between their accountant and their payroll services. They hired their payroll service directly without involving the accountant; that was the underlying problem. When the payroll service contract ended, so did their work and…