Category: Small Business
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New restrictions on partner’s employee benefits
Treas. Reg. § 301.7701-2T(c)(2)(iv)(C)(2), (TD 9766 May 4, 2016) has an adverse impact on planning of employee benefit plans for partners including participation in qualified retirement plans, health and welfare plans, and fringe benefit plans. The bottom line is that partners are not common law employees when the partnership owns a disregarded entity like an LLC that…
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Greenspan’s latest economic warning
Yesterday Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made some sharp comments in an interview on Fox News. I got the feeling this interview was meant as a sort of ‘final words of advice’ from perhaps the most influential economic leader of our era. Two points from the interview jump out at me. First, he says…
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The worst mistake a business owner can make
The worst mistake a small business owner can make is to pay employee wage taxes that were withheld from employee salary. The second worst mistake, in my observation, is to try to handle the problem yourself. I see cases where the business owners or managers are damaged for more than a decade as a result of mishandling…
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Bucks/Mont NARI membership committee notes
Notes from the membership committee meeting today 5/19/2016. As always see www.bucksmontnari.org for details.
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How to format a Profit and Loss Statement for a small business
An accounting question came up yesterday while I was preparing a compilation of year-to-date profit and loss statement for a new small business client. The business is just started and has some income to report but had incurred little actual expenses yet. The expenses were summarized simply listed as “Operating expenses” as a single line item…
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Marijuana tax accounting
Tax accounting for the growing marijuana industry is a hot topic. Federal Internal Revenue Code Section 280E says marijuana-dealing taxpayers get no deduction for many business expenses. This means that tax planning is more important than for other businesses.
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Warning to New Jersey registered charities
New Jersey registered charities may wish to double-check their listing in the online NJ Charities Registration web page. Recently the NJ Charities registration Section purged their online directory list and removed any organizations if any prior years’ CRI filing was not received. They continued to accept subsequent annual filings and apparently did not provide notice to…
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Updated tax services engagement agreement
This past month I’ve work hard to balance what appears to me to be a shift in fundamental client demands surrounding tax services with the legal requirements for income tax return preparers. The background of the issue is covered in more detail in this previous blog post. While I work primarily as an adviser, I must…
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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…