Business Strategy

  • Business or Pleasure: Determining if Your Hobby is Considered a Trade

    What is a Trade or Business? Simply put, a trade or business must satisfy the need to make a profit.  If you don’t plan to make a profit, then this is not a business, it is a hobby.  The reason for opening a business is to provide a livelihood for you (and your family). If…

  • Reduce Stress During Tax Season

    Stress can worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, premature aging, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, headaches, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma. For tax and accounting professionals, the effects of this stress are seen most clearly during tax season, and especially leading up to the filing deadline, when the workflow can ramp up…

  • Protect Yourself from Wi-Fi Hacking

    The introduction of Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP), in 1999, was supposed to be a solution to the growing issue of Wi-Fi security.  At the time, Wi-Fi was seen as an alternative to the relatively high cost of wired connections, and free Wi-Fi hotspots were springing up nationwide to serve academic and business environments.

  • Small Town Marketing

    If you grew up “shooting the loop” every Friday night in high school, knew the names of every single person living on your block, or rode a tractor to school at least once, chances are that you grew up in a small American town.

  • The Hidden Costs of Expense Report Fraud

    If there is one thing that tax preparers and accountants present to clients, it is their integrity. They are the professionals who can be consigned a client’s personal financial information or an entire firm’s financial well-being. They are the trusted business advisors and the ones most often tasked with rooting out fraud and theft. There…

  • Deducting the Cost of Looking for Work

    What You Need to Know When Deducting Job-Hunt Expenses Last week the IRS released information pertaining to deducting job search costs, including a list of nine “key tax facts” on the subject.

  • From the Shoebox to the Tax File

    It’s the client most dreaded by tax preparers – the individual or small business manager who literally shows up to have their taxes prepared armed with only a boxful of receipts and unorganized statements.  The issue is not whether it is a box, or a file, or even a handful of paper.  It is, rather,…

  • Health Care Tax Credit for Small Businesses

    The IRS recently released information pertaining to the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit, outlining the prerequisites for receiving the credit and which forms need to be filed.

  • How to Handle Cash Intensive Businesses

    The purpose of this article is to explore the methods for analyzing cash-based businesses.  We will explore techniques for uncovering unreported income.  I will take you into the new digital world for hiding cash transactions through cellphone transfers, EFTs, PayPal, and WebMoney.  We’ll discover how barter and bit-coins are finding common alliances.  Reference is made…

  • How To Start A Successful Tax Preparation Business

    The tax preparation industry consists of some 1.2 million paid professionals, according to US News and World Report, engaged in the preparation and filing of forms required by the federal, state and local governments.  The industry generates $9 billion in revenue, and last year prepared more than 82 million individual income tax returns.  The Bureau…