•A CPA Explains How to Fire Your Financial Planner
Have you gotten tired yet of paying the five, ten or twenty thousand dollars a year that you're currently paying your financial planner?
You should think about taking a do-it-yourself approach to financial planning. By following a handful of steps, you can actually plan and manage your personal finances yourself. And as long as you're thoughtful and careful, the job you do will beat the performance of about 99% of financial planners and registered investment advisors.
Seriously, firing your...
•A CPA's Accounting Tips for New Businesses
Starting a new business? You've got all sorts of ways you can complicate your accounting and your taxes. But if you want to keep your small business finances clean, lean, and low-cost, follow these five tips:
Accounting Tip #1: Don't Incorporate
Yes, incorporation may reduce your taxes (in same cases). And, true, incorporation typically reduces your legal liability. But unless you really need a standard, old-style corporation, you should keep your accounting and your taxes simple and more...
•Avoiding Small Business Incorporation Scams
Incorporating a business often makes good legal and tax sense. Absolutely.
But new entrepreneurs need to know that a handful of incorporation scams often ensnare small businesses. And that's terribly unfortunate. Getting entangled in an incorporation scam always creates headaches, usually wastes money and may even cause you to inadvertently break the law.
Scam #1: Incorporating for Automatic Tax Deductions
The first incorporation scam? Incorporating because someone (often an off-base...
•Can Your Business Operate as an S Corporation?
? More than 350,000 new S corporations are set up each year--and that's really not all that surprising. An S corporation doesn't pay corporate income taxes, which can take a huge bite out of profits. Further, an S corporation often saves each shareholder-employee five to ten thousand dollars a year in payroll taxes.
That's the good news, so to speak. But there's bad news, too, when you start talking about S corporations. You need to meet a number of qualifications in order to be treated as an...
•Five Reasons to Start Your Business as a Sole Proprietorship
New business owners always seem to wring their hands over the incorporation question. Should they, or shouldn't they, incorporate their new business. Or, no, wait. Maybe an S corporation or limited liability company makes more sense?
This obsessing over more sophisticated (and expensive!) entity options is too bad, however. New small business owners can count at least five great reasons to start a small business as a sole proprietorship.
Reason 1: Simple Setup
As compared to incorporating...
•Five Tips for Improving Small Business Cash Flow
Are your small business cash flows tight? Do you sometimes find yourself juggling bills or negotiating for early payments from customers? You may want to consider trying these five, sure-fire tips for improving your cash flow:
Tip #1: Invoice Often and Quickly
Perhaps the easiest thing you can do is quickly invoice customers or clients. Invoicing more quickly means not only that you get paid more quickly. But invoicing as soon as you've shipped a product or provided a service often means...
•Forming a Professional Limited Liability Company
Limited liability companies offer small businesses and their owners a wonderful way to minimize liability and their taxes. But the rules for when and how a professional forms a limited liability company are complicated. To make the process smoother and less burdensome, use these tips:
Tip #1: Verify Your Profession Needs (and Can Form) a Professional Limited Liability Company
State law determines whether individuals and firms practicing your particular profession in your state can form a...
•How to Name Your New Limited Liability Company
Starting a new business as a limited liability company? Obviously, you'll need to come up with a good name.
Unfortunately, the process is trickier than you might realize in today's business environment. You've got legal, marketing and even internet-related issues to ponder.
Fortunately, a handful of tips can make the process less stressful and more likely to produce in the end a good name.
Tip #1: Google Your New Name
Here's a first tip. You should Google your new limited liability company...
•Picking a CPA for your New Business
Are you an entrepreneur beginning some new venture? Or are you, perhaps, the owner of an existing business that needs to find a new CPA? Finding the right accountant can be easier if you employ the following five tips:
Determine Whether You'll Outsource Your Bookkeeping
Some businesses like to do their bookkeeping in-house using an accounting program like QuickBooks. Other businesses like to assign the work to an outside service or to their accountant.
Either approach can work well, but...
•S Corporation Tax Blunders
According to the Internal Revenue Service, S corporations now outnumber regular corporations and more than 350,000 new S corporations appear each year.
The popularity of S corporations should not surprise, however. S corporations provide two big tax savings to small business owners. First, they typically don't pay federal or state corporate income taxes.
And, second, S corporations often minimize the payroll taxes that S corporation shareholder-employees pay because only amounts the...
•Setting Up QuickBooks for a Limited Liability Company
Operating your business as a limited liability company? As you probably know, getting the QuickBooks accounting program setup correctly in your situation can be, well, tricky. But in a sense, that's a good thing. The trickiness stems from the tax accounting flexibility that the LLC option provides.
Fortunately, you can follow these three accounting tricks to keep your QuickBooks LLC setup under-control and well-organized.
Trick #1: Pretend the LLC Is Something Else
A limited liability...
•Seven Helpful Tips for Incorporating in Nevada
Thinking about incorporating your business or investment in Nevada? Consider these seven tips to make the process easier, to minimize mistakes, and to avoid trouble.
Tip #1: Don't choose Nevada unless you operate in Nevada
Let's get this first tip out of the way right up front. Nevada incorporation makes sense for businesses and investments located in Nevada. Nevada incorporation does not make sense for non-Nevadan business.
Here's why: If a Nevada corporation operates, owns property or...
•The Successful C Corporation Owner's Wealth-building Blunder
Some entrepreneurs assume that a traditional corporation, or "C corporation," provides a great structure for saving money and growing wealth. As a result, these entrepreneurs do their investing inside their C corporations.
On the face of it, this wealth-building gambit seems to make sense. Profits retained inside the small business C corporation will typically be taxed at a low 15% corporate tax rate. So the entrepreneur gets to save as much as 85% of the pre-tax profits.
In comparison, if a...
•When Operating Your Business as a C Corporation Saves Tax
Small business owners usually minimize their taxes by operating as a sole proprietorship, partnership or S corporation. Or by operating as a limited liability company taxed as a sole proprietorship, partnership or S corporation.
However, even though C corporations may cause a business to pay a second level of tax on business profit, a C corporation may save the small business owner taxes in at least three situations.
C Corporations Allow for Richer Fringe Benefits to Owners
With sole...
•Why You Maybe Shouldn't Incorporate Your Small Business
Incorporating a small business sometimes delivers big benefits. Liability always gets limited at least a little bit. And often times, incorporating means the business reduces its income taxes or the payroll taxes or both.
But incorporating creates some extra costs and headaches. And some business owners--in spite of the benefits--probably should not incorporate. Consider these risks and headaches:
Headache #1: Payroll
If you currently operate your business as a sole proprietorship and...
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