Category: 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…
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Sample professional payroll service agreement
What do you get when you hire a professional accountant to handle your payroll accounting and wage tax issues? This is certainly a fair question since the level of service seems to vary widely between providers. Some payroll service providers, I understand, do not even put the details of their services in writing. The professional…
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Crowdfunding for agriculture and aquaculture
A US-Greek agriculture company will attempt to issue $7 million in a crowdfunded offering this week. The money will be used to acquire small farm in Greece and convert them into organic producers. The company believes that it can run them more efficiently as one large enterprise. This has been a fundamental driver in consolidation within…
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Crowdfunded debt rating confirmed for investors
Moody’s rating service removed its warning on specific crowdfunded debt securities issued by Prosper and sold to investors through Citigroup. This action by Moody’s came after Prosper increased its loss projection to 13.1% of remaining assets in the pool. This news emphasises what I’ve said over and over: successful crowdfunding is based on good fundamental…
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Comcast hypocrisy on internet service
A Comcast employee was filmed on NBC10 Philadelphia news last evening saying “You can’t connect to the American Dream if you can’t connect to the Internet“. Yet after years of urging by community leaders and politicians, Comcast refuses to connect the rural communities of southern New Jersey located within 60 miles of the company’s Philadelphia headquarters. It…
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A small business marketing resolution
I’ve written recently how I cancelled a small business marketing firm’s contract because my client did not achieve the specifically stated objective of the marketing program which was to show evidence of one lead generated within the first six months of the program. The lead could have been a phone call, an email or an…
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Which of these is different than the others?
Comments about a marketing services sales video Remember those questions on cognitive aptitude test asking you to identify which item in the group is different than the others? Here’s one I ran across today in a video presentation: Item 1 – Marketing message from a daycare Item 2: marketing message from jeweler Item #3 – marketing…