Category: Small Business
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A business resurrection as consumer value returns to employee benefits
Going back since more than 20 years ago to the late 1990s, I was licensed as an insurance producer in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It was – and still is – tough to be called a small business compensation and benefits expert without also being an expert in insurance. I was…
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What’s going on in D.C. and how does it affect your South Jersey business?
Yesterday the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce sponsored a discussion program with government policy experts from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled “What’s going on in D.C. and how it affects your business?”. If you own a small business in New Jersey (like me) the basic question is likely ‘How bad will it be?’ This…
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Small Business Guidance on Payroll Withholding Postponement
This weekend the President issued an Executive Order to postpone employer’s payment of wage taxes. The advice that I and every other small business tax adviser, to my knowledge, immediately issued to clients was to take no action until we receive further guidance. Most tax experts believe that only Congress has the power to stop…
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Round Two of Small Business Recovery
Two months ago the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill called the “HEROS Act” that included financial resources to small businesses struggling to restart after the disruptive effects of pandemic shutdown. While the entire bill is not likely to become law because of objections by U.S. Republican Senators, the small business portions of that…
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Evolution of accounting support services
This message being delivered to post-tax season clients starting today: “My business, like yours and almost all other small businesses and nonprofit organizations, is moving through a period of rapid change in what is being called the “new normal”. In short, we need to ‘step up our game’, gain efficiencies through better use of technology,…
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Main Street Lending Isn’t Happening; What’s Next?
News Update Two days ago I published a Q&A format summary of the new Main Street Lending Program, a potentially huge program that was authorized by Congress as part of the Cares Act. My writing ended with an optimistic position that the program might eventually be leveraged to finance trillions of dollars of loans across…
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Main Street Lending Program Q&As
I’ve received a lot of questions about the new Main Street Lending Program. This post is meant to provide general non-technical information as a starting point in evaluating whether the program may work for your business. What is the Main Street Lending program? A program established by Congress run through the Federal Reserve offering loans…
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A Fresh Look at Electronic Fund Transfer Payments
In a perfect world, we should be able to “click and pay” anyone, anytime, securely, and at a reasonable fee. That would be true for businesses as well as individuals. The advancement of technology has enabled that process. However, the evolution of EFT processing in combination with other financial services has muddies the waters to…
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Average New Jersey tax preparation fees in 2020
THIS PAGE IS OUTDATED. FEES ARE SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER NOW. SEE SOUTHJERSEY.CPA/PRICING FOR CURRENT PRICING These are the most recent published average industry prices for tax preparation services in the state of New Jersey as of the date of this blog post. These are not my rates, although I do pay attention to this type of…
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PPP agent blues
More than two months ago on LinkedIn I posed a summary of the problem that Wells Fargo small business clients were locked out of the PPP program. I don’t know why so many small nonprofits use Wells Fargo, but they do. As an agent who handles transactions for several of these, it was perplexing. An…