Technological Innovation Means Survival
If your company wants to remain successful, change is essential and inevitable. Businesses must react to technological advances, government regulation, the economy, competition and other factors. Every change presents a new opportunity to increase efficiency and build the organization. As an owner or manager, you can respond to change two ways: You can acknowledge the…
Capital vs. Ordinary: Classifying Income and Losses Affects Your Taxes
Most of the time, how to classify gains and losses from selling an asset is fairly straightforward. But there are some gray areas that require a closer look at the facts and circumstances, especially when real estate is involved, as a couple of recent cases demonstrate. Why It Matters Distinguishing between capital and ordinary gains…
Make Sure Your Business Doesn’t Become a Continuing Daytime Drama
Creating a workforce out of family and close friends has its advantages. Most businesses that hire family members do so to provide business continuation and reduce overhead, as well as provide jobs and experience for loved ones. Presumably, you wouldn’t hire relatives if you didn’t already think that you could get along with them. But…
Should We Correct Mistakes in Our Cafeteria Plan’s Administration?
Q: We recently learned about some mistakes that were made administering our company’s cafeteria plan. For example, we discovered a few health flexible spending account (FSA) and dependent care assistance program (DCAP) expense reimbursement errors, and a couple of employees not having the right salary reduction amounts withheld. Should we correct mistakes like these? In…
Tax Rules When Your Business Trip Involves a Passport
If you travel a lot on business, you may make some international trips — as well as trips within the United States. When traveling abroad, you may want to add a few extra days to a trip for relaxing and sightseeing. Keep in mind that the tax rules for foreign business travel are different from…
Fringe Benefits for a Partnership or LLC
A special set of federal income tax rules applies to fringe benefits provided by a partnership to its partners in exchange for their services to the business. The same set of rules also generally applies to multi-member LLCs (meaning LLCs with more than one owner), because they are generally treated as partnerships for federal tax…
Improve Your 401(k) Offering For Employees for Little or No Cost
In general, 401(k)s are not living up to their promises. Yes, they do provide a tax-advantaged means to equity ownership for millions of American workers. But too many workers are not fully participating in market gains, and too much capital is being siphoned away from workers’ accounts by various inefficiencies and middlemen. That’s the conclusion…
Small Employers Get 7-Day Safe Harbor for 401(k) Deposits
Small employers* now have added certainty in knowing their time frame for transmitting employee 401(k) contributions to the plan. Compliance with deadlines is important, because holding on to employee contributions too long constitutes a prohibited transaction that could result in penalties. The U.S. Department of Labor’s establishment of a safe harbor period eases up the…
New Word for New Ideas
“Situations refuse to stand still. We need more organic and imaginative ways of adapting to and making continual sense of our workplace,” observed Gareth Morgan, author of “Imaginization: New Ways of Seeing, Organizing, and Managing.” Fusing “imagination” and “organization,” Morgan created the term “imaginization” to describe a problem-solving technique of thinking in new images or…
A Checklist of Duties with Tax and Governance Implications
Documentation and accountability are always important in business, but even more so for a not-for-profit agency. The sheer number of duties can be daunting. That’s why it’s crucial to have tools which allow you to stay on top of the details. Here’s a chart which may help you stay organized and make tracking easier. Consult…