Recent News

5 Ways to Control your Business Insurance Costs

Common sense dictates that every company, no matter how small, should carry various forms of business insurance. But that doesn’t mean you should pay unnecessarily high premiums just to retain the coverage you need. Here are five ways to better control your insurance costs without sacrificing the quality of your policies: 1. Review coverage periodically. Make sure existing policies reflect your current circumstances. For example, if you’ve sold or sunset some equipment, remove it from your schedule of current assets. If you’ve reduced the number of workers on your payroll, adjust workers’ compensation estimates accordingly. (We’ll address this further below.)...

Can You Deduct the Costs of a Spouse on a Business Trip?

If you own your own company and travel for business, you may wonder whether you can deduct the costs of having your spouse accompany you on trips. The rules for deducting a spouse’s travel costs are very restrictive. First of all, to qualify, your spouse must be your employee. This means you can’t deduct the travel costs of a spouse, even if his or her presence has a bona fide business purpose, unless the spouse is a bona fide employee of your business. This requirement prevents tax deductibility in most cases. A Spouse-Employee If your spouse is your employee, then...

Keeping Meticulous Records is the Key to Tax Deductions and Painless IRS Audits

If you operate a business, or you’re starting a new one, you know you need to keep records of your income and expenses. Specifically, you should carefully record your expenses in order to claim all of the tax deductions to which you’re entitled. And you want to make sure you can defend the amounts reported on your tax returns in case you’re ever audited by the IRS. Be aware that there’s no one way to keep business records. But there are strict rules when it comes to keeping records and proving expenses are legitimate for tax purposes. Certain types of...

Important Tax Aspects of Operating Your Business as a Sole Proprietor

If you’re in business for yourself as a sole proprietor, or you’re planning to start a business, you need to know about the tax aspects of your venture. Here are eight important issues to consider: 1. You report income and expenses on Schedule C of Form 1040. The net income is taxable to you regardless of whether you withdraw cash from the business. Your business expenses are deductible against gross income and not as itemized deductions. If you have any losses, they’re generally deductible against your other income, subject to special rules relating to hobby losses, passive activity losses and...

Let Your Financial Statements Guide You to Optimal Business Decisions

Now that 2022 is up and running, business owners can expect to face a few challenges and tough choices as the year rolls along. No matter how busy things get, don’t forget about an easily accessible and highly informative resource that’s probably just a few clicks away: your financial statements. Assuming you follow U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) or similar reporting standards, your financial statements will comprise three major components: an income statement, a balance sheet and a statement of cash flows. Each one contains different, but equally important, information about your company’s financial performance. Together, they can help...

Numerous Tax Limits Affecting Businesses Have Increased for 2022

Many tax limits that affect businesses are annually indexed for inflation, and a number of them have increased for 2022. Here’s a rundown of those that may be important to you and your business. Social Security Tax The amount of an employee’s earnings that is subject to Social Security tax is capped for 2022 at $147,000 (up from $142,800 in 2021). Deductions Standard business mileage rate, per mile: 58.5 cents (up from 56 cents in 2021) Section 179 expensing: Limit: $1.08 million (up from $1.05 million in 2021) Phaseout: $2.7 million (up from $2.62 million) Income-based phase-out for certain limits...