Business Owner’s Corner

Tips for Navigating Affordable Care Act compliance this tax season. The Affordable Care Act, known popularly as Obamacare, will be the focus of a lot of concerns for 2015 individual and business income tax return filing. We’d like to offer you the following information about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and what that means when [...]

If you’ve received a 571-L form in the mail and had over $100,000 in assets last year, that’s an indication that you are required to file a Business Property Statement (Form 571-L) for the county where your business is physically located. Filing Form 571-L constitutes an official declaration of all assessable business property situated in [...]

The reporting requirements for the various governmental agencies can be overwhelming, and, at the end of the calendar year, it seems much worse.  One of the year-end documents required to be prepared is Form 1099. Individuals, partnerships (including LLP and LLC’s), corporations, or other organizations engaged in a trade or business (including rental property) are [...]

If you’re like many unemployed people affected by the recent recession, you may have branched out on your own, and started a business. Perhaps you have worked as a sole proprietor, and it’s now time to add some employees. If so, congratulations for your success! And if you  are wondering about the impact on your [...]

The California Franchise Tax Board infuriated thousands of small business owners earlier this year when it sent out letters informing them that they owed four years’ worth of taxes due to a recent decision of the state’s Supreme Court. The court struck down a 20-year-old tax break as unconstitutional, and the FTB then felt obliged [...]

If you are about to launch your own small business, or maybe even if you have been in business for a while, you may be considering your business structure. There are a lot of options, and all offer particular advantages and disadvantages. If you’ve moved beyond the status of being a sole proprietor or maybe [...]

Aside from the incredible convenience and generally competitive prices, one of the best things about shopping at Amazon and other internet retailers has been the lack of sales tax assessed on your purchases. Of course, just because the retailer or website doesn’t collect a sales tax doesn’t mean that there is not one due. In [...]

With the beginning of summer, a lot of people start thinking about taking a vacation. And the best kind of vacation is one where you can get someone else to pick up the tab. The second-best is the kind when someone else pays for at least part of the expense. If you can manage to [...]

If you work from home, either full or part-time, you’ve probably considered taking the home office deduction as a business expense when you file your yearly income taxes. Maybe you’ve looked at the rules in the past, and decided that the paperwork involved is too complicated. Or maybe you fear that the deduction acts as [...]

When you turn your paperwork over to a tax preparer, you are trusting that person with an awful lot of personal information. You have given that person your social security number, your income information, where you live, the names of your spouse and children….. In short, you are trusting your tax preparer with everything that [...]