In early May, we asked the question, "Does Non-Profit Media Have a Competitive Edge?" This is proving to be an ever-more urgent question as conventional news companies continue to bleed money and jobs, spurring alternative business models to emerge. To cut to the quick, however, any advantages...
Probably the most important lesson to be learned from nearly a quarter century of IRS challenges to captives is to never erase the tax attorney's phone number from the speed dial. While it seems as though the taxpayer has won a few battles over this period, tax laws, revenue rulings,...
Simplified Employee Pensions SEPs provide a simplified method for employers to make contributions to a retirement plan for their employees. Instead of establishing a profit sharing or money purchase plan with a trust, employers can adopt a SEP agreement and make contributions directly to an individual retirement account or...
A type of defined contribution plan available to the small business owner with 100 or fewer employees. Under a SIMPLE 401k Plan, an employee can elect to defer some compensation. Unlike a standard 401k plan, the employer must make either: (1) a matching contribution up to 3% of...
According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, there are about 38,000 insured defined benefit plans today compared to a high of about 114,000 in 1985. They go on to state that this decline was due primarily to plans with 100 or fewer participants. One possible reason for this...
For nearly 15 years, Jeanette Cram has made sure that the nation's servicemen and women deployed overseas are not only remembered, but also well-fed. Jeanette had always felt that Treat The Troops qualified as an IRS Section 501c3 charitable organization, which would enable donors to claim a tax deduction. However,...
Planning for and providing retirement benefits for you and your employees starts with choosing the right retirement plan for your small business. Choosing is the first of four distinct stages of a retirement plan. We call these distinct stages the "Retirement Plan Life Cycle". The four stages...
"An IRA is the most basic sort of retirement arrangement. People tend to think of an IRA as something that just individuals do (hence the “I” in IRA). But an employer can help its employees to set up and fund their IRAs. With an IRA, what the employee gets at...
To pay employment taxes, a person must deposit the money with the IRS. As is typical with tax situations, the payments are not actually made to the IRS. Instead, a person must deposit the employment taxes with a federal depository. Moving the burden to the private sector, the IRS requires...
With a 401k plan, employees can choose to defer some of their salary. So instead of receiving that amount in their paycheck, the employee defers, or delays, getting that money. In this case, their deferred money is going into a 401k plan sponsored by their employer (that would...
By Jim Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters UK) - A federal judge in Miami has authorized U.S. officials to seek information from UBS AG UBSN about U.S. taxpayers suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to evade income taxes, part of a probe that could crack open Switzerland's...
By Jim Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge in Miami has authorized U.S. officials to seek information from UBS AG UBSN about U.S. taxpayers suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to evade income taxes, part of a probe that could ...
Not looking forward to the Ides of April? A new startup called Sexat ("Taxes" backwards, get it?) has worked out a deal to let you SMS your 1099s and W2s directly to the IRS—no H&R Block schmoe needed. All you have to do is follow the simple guidelines on the...
Just before Christmas, the IRS slapped Federal Express with a hefty fine: $319 million in penalties and back taxes for misclassifying drivers in its ground-delivery division during tax year 2002. The IRS charges that the 15,000 drivers should have been treated as employees, rather than independent contractors ICs. ...
Federal Express is just the latest company to face big IRS fines for mishandling contractors. Here’s how to manage ICs the right way. Decide Whether You Need One Goal: Learn what contractors can do for you...
Not surprisingly, relocation tax rules are quite complex and require many payroll-servicing companies to outsource the job of tracking and accounting for relocation related expenses. Without carefully managing relocation expenses, companies often incur unnecessary payroll and tax burdens, or worse yet, may not be in compliance with IRS rules and...
It's crucial for business owners to understand exactly what expenses can be deducted from total revenues and reported to shareholders, employees and taxing authorities. Some expenses are obvious: wages, salaries, and benefits you pay employees, for example. Allowable expenses also can vary according to activity, and thus can be a...
Most freelancers are not interested in bookkeeping. Freelancing allows freedom from structures, systems, and processes; it’s attractive because it allows you to focus on the work and not the surrounding administrative necessities. So, as a freelancer, you will likely need a firm resolve to apply yourself to your accounts.Keeping your...
As much as 95% of interior partitions and non-load-bearing walls are misclassified as short-life property. The Internal Revenue Service IRS has guidelines as to when these assets may be considered personal property. Has your cost segregation provider given you the right advice? Have they set you up for a fall?...
If General Electric GE had paper-filed the largest tax return in history its contents would have numbered 24,000 pages. Luckily, it chose to eFile and instead opted for a 237 MB file routed to the IRS via the Internet. According to Boise Cascade, illustrious purveyors of paper, 24,000 pages equates...
