I have been out of the office most of this past week. A few notes are at the bottom:
Five Ways to Make Sure You Get the Most Social Security Income at Retirement – And What You Can Do About It Now – The average monthly Social Security check for a retired worker is $1,170. Yet, the need for Social Security benefits increases with age. And, with a trend towards longer life expectancies, it makes sense to try and maximize the benefits you will receive from the program
Congress – shame on you! – ARE THEY SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?
Avoid Hiring Pitfalls When Staffing a New Venture – Hiring the right people into the right positions of a new company is critical to getting funded, and the right people are as critical to success as the funding. Yet the hiring process in most small companies is usually haphazard, and low priority compared to all the other work that needs to get done. The solution is to make this function one of your highest priority tasks, and formalize the process to avoid the following common hiring mistakes:
It’s best to make sure we get the basics right, or we don’t have a solid foundation on which to build. Back to the Basics
Good stuff here – 20 Online Project Management Tools to Boost Productivity
Remember to Transfer Assets into Your Company – When you’re first starting a business, you’re going to be bootstrapping it, which means funding it with your own money and your own assets. Maybe you change your cellphone over to business use, or you begin using your computer for business. How about getting the home office set up?
The NY State Society of CPAs’ CPA BLOG reports that “H&R Block Sues HSBC Over RALs”.
Standard Tax Deduction or Itemizing? – tax season is coming upon us and it’s never too early to start getting ready. Being informed about tax basics is beneficial even if you have someone else do your taxes. A common concern that people have is knowing whether it’s financially better for them to itemize their deductions or just take the standard one.
9 jobs with lowest unemployment
New retirement savings option: Rolling regular 401(k) money into a Roth 401(k) – A provision in the recently enacted Small Business Jobs and Credit Act now offers some employees a new way to enhance their retirement savings.
Under the law, certain amounts in 401(k) workplace retirement plans can be rolled into workplace Roth 401(k)s. The conversions are also allowed for 401(k) counterparts: 403(b) plans for nonprofits and 457(b) plans governmental jobs.
The reason for wanting to change traditional 401(k) money to Roth 401(k) cash is the same as with traditional and Roth IRAs. When the regular retirement account money is withdrawn, you’ll owe taxes on it at your ordinary income tax rate. But when Roth 401(k) funds are distributed, they are tax-free.
What You Should Expect from Social Security
As reported in web CPA –
“At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has halted the business operations of American Tax Relief, a company that heavily advertised its ability to help taxpayers who were in trouble with the IRS and allegedly bilked consumers out of more than $60 million by falsely claiming it could reduce their tax debts.
The company’s California state business license was suspended last year for not paying its own taxes, the FTC noted. The FTC is seeking to make the defendants pay restitution to victims.”
I have said it more times than I can count, DO NOT pay attention to TV ads from anyone that promise they will settle your IRS debts for “pennies on the dollar”. It is a rare occasion for that to happen. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
IRS Stats Group Posts Reports Dating Back to 1863
Safely Taking a Home Office Deduction – Do you have a business? If so, do you take the home office deduction? Assuming that, there are two criteria for taking the deduction. The home office space must be: Exclusively used for business, and Regularly used for business.
The Making Work Pay credit: The federal tax break nobody knows about
What is a DRIP? – Setting up a dividend reinvestment plan or DRIP provides a way for investors to slowly grow their money. Also referred to as a DRP, this tool can help limit expenses paid to a broker while reinvesting all dividends back into the same stock. Let’s take a closer look at what a DRIP is and how it can help the average investor.
How to Deduct 100% of Your Meals Expense – How much of your latte this morning was deductible? Read on to learn how it can be a perfectly legal 100% deduction. First, let’s start off with what it takes to turn a meals expense into a tax deduction. You need to have a business.
High interest savings accounts are best found online
17 Mutable Suggestions For Naming A Startup – Naming a startup is hard. Very hard. On the one hand, the pragmatic entrepreneur thinks: “I shouldn’t be wasting time on this — for every successful company with a great name, there’s one with a crappy name that did just fine. It doesn’t seem like a name has much influence on the outcome at all. You shouldn’t obssess about your name. But, you also shouldn’t dismiss it as unimportant. Part of the startup game is to try and remove unnecessary friction to your growth. Sure, you could build a spectacularly successful company despite having a lousy name — but why not stack the odds in your favor?
MY FINAL WORDS – REALLY! PART I
MY FINAL WORDS – REALLY! PART II
How to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation - There is a near universal belief that having more money automatically improves a person’s personal finances. This could be the case if an increase in income or a sudden windfall are handled properly, but it doesn’t always work that way. More often than not, an increase in income is followed by an increase in spending. This is commonly referred to as lifestyle inflation and while an increase in spending is not always a bad thing, there is the potential to take it too far.
Your retirement account might get smaller this year
Gold: A Sound Investment or Overrated? – According to Goldprice.org, an ounce of gold currently costs about $1,325. What does this mean? It means that if you’re thinking about investing in gold, you should be REALLY sure about why you’re doing it.
How Networking Online Can Lead to Real Profits
Avoid Hiring Pitfalls When Staffing a New Venture – the hiring process in most small companies is usually haphazard, and low priority compared to all the other work that needs to get done. The solution is to make this function one of your highest priority tasks, and formalize the process to avoid the following common hiring mistakes
Report: 9 jobs with lowest unemployment
Estimates & More Excluded from Closing Date-QuickBooks 2011
I have been looking for a place to open up a store front office. My reasons for doing this are vast. I thought I had a place found. It doubled the space I use now and the cost lay out as just right (more than I wanted to pay, but for what I was getting. . .). The plan was to share a space with one of my clients who is upgrading his location and office space. The location however was all wrong. Clients agreed. So as it stands my current location will stay. I won’t worry again about this until next June.
Before I upgraded my web site (www.lrtaxprep.com), my site had vast information focused on tax prep. Mostly information one might use to help them prepare their return. With my new site I intend to put those pages back up, just having some timing issues. However I received a phone call from a reader who needed my Fair Market Value info. Kind of complained that it wasn’t on my sight. Well, it still isn’t because I want to update it from last year, but want to assure everyone that I will get that information back up.
Finially I want to add, Missouri remained as the only unbeaten team left in the Big 12 after scoring 16 consecutive points in the fourth quarter to upend third-ranked Oklahoma, 36-27.
The last time Missouri faced Oklahoma during homecoming week was 1998.
© 2010, Bruce Mc. All rights reserved.
