Recent News

Timelines: 3 ways business owners should look at succession planning

Business owners are rightly urged to develop succession plans so their companies will pass on to the next generation, or another iteration of ownership, in a manner that best ensures continued success. Ideally, the succession plan you develop for your company will play out over a long period that allows everyone plenty of time to adjust to the changes involved. But, as many business owners learned during the pandemic, life comes at you fast. That’s why succession planning should best be viewed from three separate but parallel timelines: 1. Long term. If you have many years to work with, use...

Tax tips when buying the assets of a business

After experiencing a downturn in 2023, merger and acquisition activity in several sectors is rebounding in 2024. If you’re buying a business, you want the best results possible after taxes. You can potentially structure the purchase in two ways: Buy the assets of the business, or Buy the seller’s entity ownership interest if the target business is operated as a corporation, partnership or LLC. In this article, we’re going to focus on buying assets. Asset purchase tax basics You must allocate the total purchase price to the specific assets acquired. The amount allocated to each asset becomes the initial tax...

Businesses must face the reality of cyberattacks and continue fighting back

With each passing year, as networked technology becomes more and more integral to how companies do business, a simple yet grim reality comes further into focus: The cyberattacks will continue. In fact, many experts are now urging business owners and their leadership teams to view malicious cyberactivity as more of a certainty than a possibility. Why? Because it seems to be happening to just about every company in one way or another. A 2023 study by U.K.-based software and hardware company Sophos found that, of 3,000 business leaders surveyed across 14 countries (including 500 in the United States), a whopping 94%...

8 key features of a customer dispute resolution process for businesses

No matter how carefully and congenially you run your business, customer disputes will likely happen from time to time. Some of the complaints may be people looking to negotiate a discount, “game the system” or even outright defraud you. But others could be legitimate complaints arising from mistakes on your company’s part, technological glitches or, perhaps worst of all, fraudulent actions by a third party. Whatever the case may be, you can protect your business’s reputation and even strengthen its brand by creating and maintaining an effective customer dispute resolution process that includes eight key features: 1. Easily accessible channels of communication. Post...

B2B businesses need a cohesive strategy for collections

If your company operates in the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, you’ve probably experienced some collections challenges. Every company, whether buyer or seller, is trying to manage cash flow. That means customers will often push off payments as long as possible to retain those dollars. Meanwhile, your business, as the seller, needs the money to meet its revenue and cash flow goals. There’s no easy solution, of course. But you can “grease the wheels,” so to speak, by strategically devising and continuously improving a methodical collections process. Payment terms Getting paid promptly depends, at least in part, on the terms you set forth...

When businesses may want to take a contrary approach with income and deductions

Businesses usually want to delay recognition of taxable income into future years and accelerate deductions into the current year. But when is it wise to do the opposite? And why would you want to? One reason might be tax law changes that raise tax rates. The Biden administration has proposed raising the corporate federal income tax rate from its current flat 21% to 28%. Another reason may be because you expect your noncorporate pass-through entity business to pay taxes at higher rates in the future and the pass-through income will be taxed on your personal return. There have also been...