How “Aggregating” Businesses Can Boost Your QBI Deduction
Recently proposed IRS regulations provide aggregation rules that allow eligible individuals to “aggregate” their businesses in order to maximize the new qualified business income (QBI) deduction. Specifically, they may be able to combine income, W-2 wages and the unadjusted basis immediately after acquisition (UBIA) of qualified assets from qualified businesses conducted as pass-through entities. Here’s…
What’s Happened to My Tax-Free Transportation Fringe Benefits?
Over the years, Congress has established some nice tax breaks for transportation-related employee fringe benefits to encourage taxpayers to be more ecology-minded when commuting to work. But, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is changing the landscape for these tax-favored fringe benefits, and not in a good way for individual taxpayers. As a result,…
How Income Taxes Work
The Internal Revenue Service estimates that taxpayers and businesses spend 8.1 billion hours a year complying with tax-filing requirements. To put this into perspective, if all this work were done by a single company, it would need more than three million full-time employees and be one of the largest industries in the United States.1 Refund…
Debt Stress
American households hold an average debt of nearly $54,000, with 35% having debt in collections.¹ Little wonder that money worries are a major cause of stress. The Link between Stress and Health Humans have an innate response called “flight or fight.” It is nature’s way of launching our bodies into action; consider the physical responses…
Treasury and IRS Propose the Use of NAICS for Calculation of UBIT
GRF Nonprofit Tax Partner and Director of Nonprofit Tax, Richard J. Locastro, CPA, JD was quoted in Bloomberg Law’s August 22, 2018 Daily Tax Report on the proposed use of federal codes for nonprofits’ unrelated income. Treasury and IRS are considering the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) as an answer to exempt organizations’ concerns…
IRS Issues Proposed Guidance on Complicated QBI Deduction Rules
The IRS has finally issued eagerly awaited regulations addressing the new deduction for up to 20% of qualified business income (QBI) from pass-through entities. The QBI deduction was a major piece of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed into law last December. The deduction is available to eligible owners of pass-through entities…
Benefits Cost Employers a Bundle
The national average paid out by employers for employee benefits is 39% of total payroll costs. This figure comes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, based on a survey of nearly 400 U.S. companies of various sizes, industries and geographic locations. Here are some of the specific figures from the survey: One in 10 employers…
Use Business Intelligence to Make Profitable Decisions
As the saying goes, “knowledge is power.” To derive knowledge from your company’s operating data requires the development of an effective business intelligence (BI) program. Simply put, BI is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help corporate executives, managers and others make more informed decisions. For example, if you’re clear…
Keep Tax-Smart Corporate Minutes
If you operate your law firm as a C corporation, you may be required to conduct an annual corporate meeting and keep minutes of the proceedings. The requirement to keep minutes is sometimes viewed as a burdensome task, but there’s some good news: Minutes can also be used to document the firm’s intentions for transactions…
Drop Evaluations and Grow Employees
There’s a connection between involving your employees in their own achievement, and the achievement and success of your business or organization. And one important strategy to increase your employees’ involvement in their own achievement is to switch from a traditional employee evaluation to an employee achievement plan. The traditional employee appraisal, the type most supervisors…