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Does U.S. tax code call for small business owners to count business purchases as personal income? | I am going to keep things very simple and explain the common-sense reason why the accountant is right: Also, my sister in law owns a small restaurant, where they claim their accountant informed them of the same thing, where a portion of their business purchases had to be counted as taxable personal income. In this case, they said their actual income for the year (through their paychecks) was around 40-50K, but because of this detail, their taxable income came out to be around 180K, causing them to owe a huge amount of tax (30K ish). Consider them and a similarly situated couple that didn't make these purchases. Your sister in law is better off in that she has the benefit of these purchases (increasing the value of her business and her expected future income), but she's worse off because she got less pay. Presumably, she thought this was a fair trade, otherwise she wouldn't have made those purchases. So why should she pay any less in taxes? There's no reason making fair trades should reduce anyone's tax burden. Now, as the items she purchased lose value, that will be a business loss called "depreciation". That will be deductible. But the purchases themselves are not, and the income that generated the money to make those purchases is taxable. Generally speaking, business gains are taxable, regardless of what you do with the money (whether you pay yourself, invest it, leave it in the business, or whatever). Generally speaking, only business losses or expenses are deductible. A purchase is an even exchange of income for valuable property -- even exchanges are not deductions because the gain of the thing purchased already fairly compensates you for the cost. You don't specify the exact tax status of the business, but there are really only two types of possibilities. It can be separately taxed as a corporation or it can be treated essentially as if it didn't exist. In the former case, corporate income tax would be due on the revenue that was used to pay for the purchases. There would be no personal income tax due. But it's very unlikely this situation applies as it means all profits taken out of the business are taxed twice and so small businesses are rarely organized this way. In the latter case, which is almost certainly the one that applies, business income is treated as self-employment income. In this case, the income that paid for the purchases is taxable, self-employment income. Since a purchase is not a deductible expense, there is no deduction to offset this income. So, again, the key points are: How much she paid herself doesn't matter. Business income is taxable regardless of what you do with it. When a business pays an expense, it has a loss that is deductible against profits. But when a business makes a purchase, it has neither a gain nor a loss. If a restaurant buys a new stove, it trades some money for a stove, presumably a fair trade. It has had no profit and no loss, so this transaction has no immediate effect on the taxes. (There are some exceptions, but presumably the accountant determined that those don't apply.) When the property of a business loses value, that is usually a deductible loss. So over time, a newly-purchased stove will lose value. That is a loss that is deductible. The important thing to understand is that as far as the IRS is concerned, whether you pay yourself the money or not doesn't matter, business income is taxable and only business losses or expenses are deductible. Investments or purchases of capital assets are neither losses nor expenses. There are ways you can opt to have the business taxed separately so only what you pay yourself shows up on your personal taxes. But unless the business is losing money or needs to hold large profits against future expenses, this is generally a worse deal because money you take out of the business is taxed twice -- once as business income and again as personal income. Update: Does the business eventually, over the course of the depreciation schedule, end up getting all of the original $2,000 tax burden back? Possibly. Ultimately, the entire cost of the item is deductible. That won't necessarily translate into getting the taxes back. But that's really not the right way to think about it. The tax burden was on the income earned. Upon immediate replacement, hypothetically with the exact same model, same cost, same 'value', isn't it correct that the "value" of the business only went up by the amount the original item had depreciated? Yes. If you dispose of or sell a capital asset, you will have a gain or loss based on the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and whatever you got for the asset. Wouldn't the tax burden then only be $400? Approximately, yes. The disposal of the original asset would cause a loss of the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and what you got for it (which might be zero). The new asset would then begin depreciating. You are making things a bit more difficult to understand though by focusing on the amount of taxes due rather than the amount of taxable gain or loss you have. They don't always correlate directly (because tax rates can vary). |
What are 'business fundamentals'? | From http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Business+Fundamentals The facts that affect a company's underlying value. Examples of business fundamentals include debt, cash flow, supply of and demand for the company's products, and so forth. For instance, if a company does not have a sufficient supply of products, it will fail. Likewise, demand for the product must remain at a certain level in order for it to be successful. Strong business fundamentals are considered essential for long-term success and stability. See also: Value Investing, Fundamental Analysis. For a stock the basic fundamentals are the second column of numbers you see on the google finance summary page, P/E ratio, div/yeild, EPS, shares, beta. For the company itself it's generally the stuff on the 'financials' link (e.g. things in the quarterly and annual report, debt, liabilities, assets, earnings, profit etc. |
Business Investment Loss from prior year | You need to give specific dates! In the United States, you have three years to file an amended tax return. https://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Ten-Facts-about-Amended-Tax-Returns Did the restaurant fail in 2012? If so, that's probably the year to take the loss. If you need to amend your 2012 return, which you filed in 2013, you should have until 2016 to file this. The exact date may be based on when you filed 2012 taxes! |
Would the purchase of a car for a business through the use of a business loan be considered a business expense? | You don't say what country you live in. If it's the U.S., the IRS has very specific rules for business use of a car. See, for starters at least, http://www.irs.gov/publications/p463/ch04.html. The gist of it is: If you use the car 100% for business purposes, you NEVER use it to drive to the grocery store or to your friend's house, etc, then it is a deductible business expense. If you use a car party for business use and partly for personal use, than you can deduct the portion of the expense of the car that is for business use, but not the portion that is for personal use. So basically, if you use the car 75% for business purposes and 25% for personal use, you can deduct 75% of the cost and expenses. You can calculate the business use by, (a) Keeping careful records of how much you spent on gas, oil, repairs, etc, tracking the percentage of business use versus percentage of personal use, and then multiplying the cost by the percentage business use and that is the amount you can deduct; or (b) Use the standard mileage allowance, so many cents per mile, which changes every year. Note that the fact that you paid for the car from a business account has absolutely nothing to do with it. (If it did, then everyone could create a small business, open a business account, pay all their bills from there, and all their personal expenses would magically become business expenses.) Just by the way: If you are going to try to stretch the rules on your taxes, business use of a car or personal computer or expenses for a home office are the worst place to do it. The IRS knows that cars and computers are things that can easily be used for either personal or business purposes and so they keep a special eye out on these. |
Why is “cheque cashing” a legitimate business? | In my experience (in the US), the main draw of check-cashing businesses (like "CheckN2Cash" is that they will hold your check for a certain period of time. This is also known as a "payday loan". Rather than bringing them a check someone else has written you, you write them a check yourself, postdated, and they pay you the amount on the check less their fees, and agree not to cash the check until a future date. So if you don't have the money right now but you need it before your next payday, you visit a check-cashing business and get the money, and it'll be withdrawn from your account after your next paycheck. |
Valuing a small business to invest in | It should be pretty obvious that without knowing what sort of assets the company owns, and what sort of net earnings are being generated it's impossible to say what a $20k equity investment should get you in terms of ownership percentage. With that said, you want to look at a few to several years of books, look for trends. Some things to understand that might be subtle red flags: It's extremely common for early stage investors to essentially make loans rather than strictly buying shares. In the worst case scenario creditors get to participate in liquidation proceedings before shareholders do. You may be better off investing in this business via a loan that's convertible to equity at your discretion. Single owner service companies are difficult because all of the net earnings go to the proprietor and that person maintains all of the relationships. So taking something like 5 years of net earnings as the value of the company doesn't make much sense because you (or someone else) couldn't just step in and replace the owner. Granted, you aren't contemplating taking over the business, but it negates using an X years of net earnings valuation method. When you read about valuation there is a sort of overriding assumption that no single person could topple the operation which couldn't be farther from the truth in single employee service companies. Additionally, understand that your investment in a single owner company hinges completely on one person's ability and willingness to work. It's really vital to understand the purpose of the funds. Someone will be hired? $20,000 couldn't be even six months of wages... Put things in to perspective with a pad, pen and calculator. Don't invest in the pipe dream of a friend of yours, and DEFINITELY don't hand this person the downpayment for their new house. The first rule of investing is "don't lose money," this isn't emotional, this is a dollars and cents pragmatic process. Why does the business need this money? How will you be paid back? Personally, I think it would be more gratifying to put $20k in a blender and watch it blend, this is probably a horrible investment. The risk should just be left to credit card companies. |
Borrow money to invest in a business venture with equity? | It's clearly a risk, but is it any different than investing in your own business? Yes, it is different. If you own a business, you determine the path of the business. You determine how much risk the business takes. You can put in extra effort to try to make the business work. You can choose to liquidate to preserve your capital. If you invest without ownership, perhaps the founder retains a 50% plus one share stake, then whomever controls the business controls all those things. So you have all the risks of owning the business (in terms of things going wrong) without the control to make things go right. This makes investing in someone else's business inherently riskier. Another problem that can occur is that you could find out that the business is fraudulent. Or the business can become fraudulent. Neither of those are risks if you are the business owner. You won't defraud yourself. Angel investing, that is to say investing in someone else's startup, is inherently risky. This is why it is difficult to find investors, even though some startups go on to become fabulously wealthy (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Most startups fail. They offer the possibility of great returns because it's really hard to determine which ones will fail and which will succeed. Otherwise the business would just take out the same loan that Jane's getting, and leave Jane out of it. |
Why can't online transactions be completed outside of business hours? | Generally, unless you're doing a wire transfer, bank transactions are processed in batches overnight. So the credit card company won't be able to confirm your transfer until the next business day (it may take even longer for them to actually receive the money). |
Full-time work + running small side business: Best business structure for taxes? | A tax return is a document you sign and file with the government to self-report your tax obligations. A tax refund is the payment you receive from the government if your payments into the tax system exceeded your obligations. As others have mentioned, if an extra $2K in income generated $5K in taxes, chances are your return was prepared incorrectly. The selection of an appropriate entity type for your business depends a lot on what you expect to see over the next several years in terms of income and expenses, and the extent to which you want or need to pay for fringe benefits or make pretax retirement contributions from your business income. There are four basic flavors of entity which are available to you: Sole proprietorship. This is the simplest option in terms of tax reporting and paperwork required for ongoing operations. Your net (gross minus expenses) income is added to your wage income and you'll pay tax on the total. If your wage income is less than approximately $100K, you'll also owe self-employment tax of approximately 15% in addition to income tax on your business income. If your business runs at a loss, you can deduct the loss from your other income in calculating your taxable income, though you won't be able to run at a loss indefinitely. You are liable for all of the debts and obligations of the business to the extent of all of your personal assets. Partnership. You will need at least two participants (humans or entities) to form a partnership. Individual items of income and expense are identified on a partnership tax return, and each partner's proportionate share is then reported on the individual partners' tax returns. General partners (who actively participate in the business) also must pay self-employment tax on their earnings below approximately $100K. Each general partner is responsible for all of the debts and obligations of the business to the extent of their personal assets. A general partnership can be created informally or with an oral agreement although that's not a good idea. Corporation. Business entities can be taxed as "S" or "C" corporations. Either way, the corporation is created by filing articles of incorporation with a state government (doesn't have to be the state where you live) and corporations are typically required to file yearly entity statements with the state where they were formed as well as all states where they do business. Shareholders are only liable for the debts and obligations of the corporation to the extent of their investment in the corporation. An "S" corporation files an information-only return similar to a partnership which reports items of income and expense, but those items are actually taken into account on the individual tax returns of the shareholders. If an "S" corporation runs at a loss, the losses are deductible against the shareholders' other income. A "C" corporation files a tax return more similar to an individual's. A C corporation calculates and pays its own tax at the corporate level. Payments from the C corporation to individuals are typically taxable as wages (from a tax point of view, it's the same as having a second job) or as dividends, depending on how and why the payments are made. (If they're in exchange for effort and work, they're probably wages - if they're payments of business profits to the business owners, they're probably dividends.) If a C corporation runs at a loss, the loss is not deductible against the shareholders' other income. Fringe benefits such as health insurance for business owners are not deductible as business expenses on the business returns for S corps, partnerships, or sole proprietorships. C corporations can deduct expenses for providing fringe benefits. LLCs don't have a predefined tax treatment - the members or managers of the LLC choose, when the LLC is formed, if they would like to be taxed as a partnership, an S corporation, or as a C corporation. If an LLC is owned by a single person, it can be considered a "disregarded entity" and treated for tax purposes as a sole proprietorship. This option is not available if the LLC has multiple owners. The asset protection provided by the use of an entity depends quite a bit on the source of the claim. If a creditor/plaintiff has a claim based on a contract signed on behalf of the entity, then they likely will not be able to "pierce the veil" and collect the entity's debts from the individual owners. On the other hand, if a creditor/plaintiff has a claim based on negligence or another tort-like action (such as sexual harassment), then it's very likely that the individual(s) involved will also be sued as individuals, which takes away a lot of the effectiveness of the purported asset protection. The entity-based asset protection is also often unavailable even for contract claims because sophisticated creditors (like banks and landlords) will often insist the the business owners sign a personal guarantee putting their own assets at risk in the event that the business fails to honor its obligations. There's no particular type of entity which will allow you to entirely avoid tax. Most tax planning revolves around characterizing income and expense items in the most favorable ways possible, or around controlling the timing of the appearance of those items on the tax return. |
New vending route business, not sure how to determine taxes | You're not paying taxes three times but you are paying three different taxes (or more). Sales tax is a business expense, just like costs of goods sold or interest on a loan. Then, depending on how you structure the business, the net income of the business just hits you personally and you pay income taxes. You can work with a tax person to lend some efficiency to this on a long term basis, but it's not like you pay all the taxes against your gross receipts. Whether or not you can make this profitable is a whole different issue. |
How to treat miles driven to the mechanic, gas station, etc when calculating business use of car? | Alright, IRS Publication 463: Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses Business and personal use. If you use your car for both business and personal purposes, you must divide your expenses between business and personal use. You can divide your expense based on the miles driven for each purpose. Example. You are a sales representative for a clothing firm and drive your car 20,000 miles during the year: 12,000 miles for business and 8,000 miles for personal use. You can claim only 60% (12,000 ÷ 20,000) of the cost of operating your car as a business expense Obviously nothing helpful in the code. So I would use option 1, weight the maintenance-related mileage by the proportion of business use. Although if you use your car for business a lot (and perhaps have a spouse with a car), an argument could be made for 3. So I would consider my odds of being audited (even lower this year due to IRS budget cuts) and choose 1 or 3. And of course never throw anything away until you're room temperature. |
Can a business refuse to take credit cards? | Businesses are free to decide what payment methods they accept for their goods and services. Businesses sometimes advertise what credit cards they accept by posting some stickers at their door. When your credit card isn't among them and you don't have enough cash with you, ask about your card before you order. If a business doesn't accept your credit card, your best recourse is to take your business elsewhere. When you already ate there and got into an awkward situation because you assumed that they would accept your card, you might also want to write an online review of the place and warn others to bring cash for their visit (but please be fair in the review. When the food and service are decent, a restaurant doesn't deserve a one star rating just because they don't take credit cards). Note that businesses have good reasons to not accept credit cards. It often means additional cost for them in form of: But there is also a more shady reason. Taking payment in cash means that there is no electronic trail of the transaction. That makes it far easier for an establishment to misreport their income. They might under-report it to evade taxes or over-report it to launder money (both are illegal, of course). |
Get a loan with low interest rate on small business | I am going to assume your location is the US. From what I am seeing it is unlikely you will get a loan other than some government backed thing. You are a poor risk. At 7k/month, you have above average household income. The fact that all of your income "is being washed off somewhere" is a behavior problem, not a mathematical one. For example, why do you have a car payment? You should purchase a car for cash. Failing that, given reasonable rent (1100), reasonable car payment (400), insurances (300), other expenses (1000), you should clear at least 4000 per month in cash flow. Where is that money going? Here tracking spending and budgeting is your friend. Figure out the leaks in your budget and fix them. By cutting back, and perhaps working a second job or somehow earning more you could have a down payment for a home in as little as 10 months. That is not a very long time. Similarly we can discuss the grocery store. Had you prepared for this moment three years ago you could have bought the store for cash. This would have eliminated a bunch of risk and increase the likelihood of this venture's success. If you had started this one year ago, you could have gone in with a significant down payment. The bank would see this as a good risk if you wanted to borrow the remainder. Instead the bank sees you as a person as a poor risk. You spend every dime you make without much concern for the future or possible negative events (by implication of your question). If you cannot handle the cash flows of regular employment well, how can you handle the cash flows of a grocery business? It is far more complex, and there is far less room for error. So how do you get a loan? I would start with learning on how to manage your personal finance well prior to delving into the world of business. |
Using cash back rewards from business credit card | A C-Corp is not a pass-through entity, any applicable taxes would be paid by the Corporation, which is a separate legal entity from yourself. If you use the points to purchase something for yourself, that would constitute "income" to you, and would be taxable on your personal income tax. |
Moving a personal business to a LLC accounting in California | You can move money in and out of the business at will, just keep track of every transaction. Ideally you'd use an accounting software like QuickBooks or similar. Create a Capital Contributions account and every time you put money into the business checking account record it as a Capital Contribution. Likewise, if you take money out of the business, it comes from your capital accounts. (You can create a separate Capital Distributions account in your accounting software, or just use a single account for contributions and distributions). Money coming in and out of those capital accounts is not taxable because you will pay taxes based on net earnings regardless of whether or not you have distributed any profits. So there's no need to make a loan to the company, which would have tax consequences. To reimburse yourself for purchases already made, submit an expense report to the company. If the company is unfunded right now, you can make a capital contribution to cover current expenses, submit the expense report, and wait until you have some profits before paying out the expense report or making any distributions. Welcome to entrepreneurship. |
US Double Taxation - Business Trips and the Foreign Tax Credit | If you're a US citizen, money earned while in the US is sourced to the US. So you can't apply FTC/FEIE to the amounts attributable to the periods of your work while in the US even if it is a short business trip. Tax treaties may affect this. Most tax treaties have explicit provisions to exclude short trips from the sourcing rules, however due to the "saving clause" these would probably not apply to you if you're a US citizen - you'll need to read the relevant treaty. Your home country should allow credit for the US taxes paid on the US-sourced income, and the double-taxation avoidance provision should apply in this case. The technicalities depend on your specific country. You would probably not just remove it from the taxable income, there probably is a form similar to the US form 1116 to calculate the available credit. |
Can I use my Roth IRA to start a business? | Read the Forbes article titled IRA Adventures. While it's not the detailed regulations you certainly need, the article gives some great detail and caution. You may be able to do what you wish, but it must be structured to adhere to specific rules to avoid self dealing. Those rules would be known by the custodians who would help you set up the right structure, it's well buried within IRS regs, I'm sure. Last, in general, using IRA funds to invest in the non-traditional assets adds that other layer of risk, that the investment will be deemed non-allowed and/or self-dealing. So, even if you have the best business idea going, be sure you get proper council on this. |
Really have to use business credit card for personal expenses | I really have to use the business card for personal expenses, please assume that in your answer. This is very hard to believe. You must do that? Why not just have the company pay you $1600 each month? Then you can use that money for whatever you want. Why can't you do this? (I cannot think of a legitimate reason...) How to integrate the personal expenses in company? Anyway, to answer your question, what I've done when I accidentally used my corporate card for a personal expense is to code the expense as a payment to me similar to if a check had been written to me. If you aren't ever paying yourself, then you should just pay the company back the $1600 every month. As a side note, I highly recommend you don't do this. By doing this on a regular basis you are opening the door for piercing the corporate veil. This means that the financial protections provided by the LLC could potentially be stripped away since personal and corporate funds are being mixed. The unfortunate end result is that personal assets could end up being fair game too in a judgement against the company. Even if you aren't an owner, your relative could be considered to be "using business money for personal expenses", namely, letting a relative spend business funds for personal use. How to show more expenses and lessen the profit? If you're referring to the personal expenses, then you absolutely do not want to do this! That's illegal and worthy of stiff penalties, which possibly include jail time for tax evasion. Better to just have the company pay you and then the entire payment is deductible and reduces the profit of the company. |
Using credit card points to pay for tax deductible business expenses | For simplicity, let's start by just considering cash back. In general, cash back from credit cards for personal use is not taxable, but for business use it is taxable (sort of, I'll explain later). The reason is most personal purchases are made with after tax dollars; you typically aren't deducting the cost of what you purchased from your personal income, so if you purchase something that costs $100 and you receive $2 back from the CC company, effectively you have paid $98 for that item but that wouldn't affect your tax bill. However, since businesses typically deduct most expenses, that same $100 deduction would have only been a $98 deduction for business tax purposes, so in this case the $2 should be accounted for. Note, you should not consider that $2 as income though; that would artificially inflate your revenue. It should be treated as a negative expense, similar to how you would handle returning an item you purchased and receiving a CC refund. Now for your specific questions: Part 1: As a small business owner, I wish to attend an annual seminar to improve my business. I have enough credit card reward points to cover the airfare, hotel, and rental car. Will those expenses still be deductible at the value displayed on the receipt? Effectively no, these expenses are not deductible. If you deduct them they will be completely counter-acted by the "refund" you receive for the payments. Part 2: Does it matter if those points are accrued on my personal credit card, rather than a business credit card? This is where it gets hairy. Suppose your company policy is that employees make purchases with their own personal credit cards and submit receipts for reimbursement. In this case the employer can simply reimburse and would not know or care if the employee is racking up rewards/points/cashback. The trick is, as the employee, you must always purchase business related items normally so you have receipts to show, and if you receive cashback on the side there seems to be a "don't ask, don't tell" rule that the IRS is OK with. It works the same way with heavy business travelers and airline miles- the free vacations those users get as perks are not treated as taxable income. However, I would not go out of my way to abuse this "loophole". Typically, things like travel (airfare, hotel, car rental, meals) are expected. But I wouldn't go purchase 100 company laptops on your personal card and ask the company to reimburse you. The company should purchase those 100 laptops on a company card and effectively reduce the sale price by the cashback received. (Or more realistically, negotiate a better discount with your account rep and just cut them a check.) Part 3: Would there be any difference between credit card points and brand-loyalty points? If the rental car were paid for with points earned directly on the rental car company's loyalty system (not a CC), would that yield a different result? There is no difference. Perhaps the simplest way to think about this is you can only deduct an expense that you actually incur. In other words, the expense should show up on a bank or CC statement. This is why when you volunteer and work 10 hours for a charity, you can't call that a "donation" of any amount of money because there is no actual payment made that would show up on a bank statement. Instead you could have billed the charity for your 10 hours of work, and then turned around and donated that same amount back to them, but it ends up being a wash. |
How to account for money earned and spent prior to establishing business bank accounts? | Funds earned and spent before opening a dedicated business account should be classified according to their origination. For example, if your business received income, where did that money go? If you took the money personally, it would be considered either a 'distribution' or a 'loan' to you. It is up to you which of the two options you choose. On the flip side, if your business had an expense that you paid personally, that would be considered either a 'contribution of capital' or a 'loan' from you. If you choose to record these transactions as loans, you can offset them together, so you don't need two separate accounts, loan to you and loan from you. When the bank account was opened, the initial deposit came from where? If it came from your personal funds, then it is either a 'contribution of capital' or a 'loan' from you. From the sound of your question, you deposited what remained after the preceding income/expenses. This would, in effect, return the 'loan' account back to zero, if choosing that route. The above would also be how to record any expenses you may pay personally for the business (if any) in the future. Because these transactions were not through a dedicated business bank account, you can't record them in Quickbooks as checks and deposits. Instead, you can use Journal Entries. For any income received, you would debit your capital/loan account and credit your income account. For any expenses, you would debit the appropriate expense account and credit your distribution/loan account. Also, if setting up a loan account, you should choose either Current Asset or Current Liability type. The capital contribution and distribution account should be Equity type. Hope this helps! |
Do I need a Like-Kind Exchange when selling a personal vehicle for a company car | You cannot do a like-kind (Sec. 1031) exchange for personal property, only for business/investment property. Since you said that you traded in your personal car - no like-kind exchange is possible. Also, since the new car doesn't belong to you - you didn't actually perform any exchange. You sold your old car, but you didn't buy a new one. If Turbo-Tax suggests you to fill the exchange form - you must have entered something wrong to make it think there was an exchange. Check your entries again, specifically - check if you entered that you purchased a new car instead of the old one, since you didn't. See an example of where to start looking here. |
Can I Accept Gold? | Of course you can accept gold as payment. Would anyone pay in gold? Would it have tax consequences on your federal taxes? These additional questions are off-topic on this site about personal finance. |
How to deduct operational loss from my personal income tax? | I'm not an accountant, and you should probably get the advice of one to be sure about what to do. However, if the business is a sole-proprietorship, you'd complete a Schedule C for the business, and you'd end up with a loss at the end. If the investment you made in the business is considered to be entirely or partially "at risk" per the IRS definition, you'd get to claim all or part of the loss as a reduction in your income. If the business was an LLC, then you're beyond my already limited knowledge. There may be some other considerations based on whether this was really a business vs a hobby, and whether or not you're going to try to continue with the business, or whether you've shut it down. I'm not sure about those parts, but they'd be worth exploring with an accountant. |
Can my company buy my personal debt? | When your debt is forgiven, you have to consider the amount written off as an ordinary income item (with the exclusion of the debt originated from the purchase of primary home). If you're trying to write the debt off from your taxes - then it won't work. Even if you can expense the debt forgiveness, you will incur tax liability on your personal taxes side, and in addition you'll be out of cash in your business. So basically you'll end up paying it with after tax money, exactly the thing you're trying to avoid. In addition, you're dealing with related persons here, which means that the loss deduction might not be allowed (depends on the actual details of the transaction), so you might actually end up paying more taxes with this scheme that just paying off the loan directly (if your business pays taxes separately from your person). A loss on the sale or exchange of property between related persons is not deductible. This applies to both direct and indirect transactions, but not to distributions of property from a corporation in a complete liquidation. For the list of related persons, see Related persons next. |
What is the difference between a bond and a debenture? | Investopedia has definitions for both: Debenture: A type of debt instrument that is not secured by physical asset or collateral. Bond: A debt investment in which an investor loans money to an entity (corporate or governmental) that borrows the funds for a defined period of time at a fixed interest rate. Wikipedia's entry for debenture says: In some countries [debenture] is used interchangeably with bond, loan stock or note. Seems to me that there's not much difference. |
How to have a small capital investment in US if I am out of the country? | For $100 you better just hold it in Mexico. The cost of opening an account could eat 10% or more of your capital easily, and that won't be able to buy enough shares of an ETF or similar investment to make it worthwhile. |
Do I owe taxes if my deductions are higher than my income? | No, it's not possible. Even if you had no deduction or credits, your federal tax on $16,604 would be: $9075 @ 10% = $907.50 + $7529 @ 15% = $1129.35 = $2036.85 That assumes you are filing as single. There must be more to the story. Typo in your income numbers? Also, what do you mean by a self-employment tax deduction? Maybe update your question to include a breakdown of everything you entered? Edit: As noted in Loren's answer, it seems that it is indeed possible in at least one case (self-employment taxes). |
What increases your chance of being audited? | Here is an article that claims to know something about it. Here are a selection of quotes: The IRS says there are several ways a return can be selected for audit and the first is via the agency's computer-scoring system known as Discriminant Information Function, or DIF. The IRS evaluates tax returns based on IRS formulas, and DIF is based on deductions, credits and exemptions with norms for taxpayers in each of the income brackets. The actual scoring formula to determine which tax returns are most likely to be in error is a closely guarded secret. But Nath, a tax attorney in the Washington, D.C., area, says it's no mystery the system is designed to screen for returns that could put more money in the government Treasury. So what is likely to trigger a discriminant information function red flag? |
If I invest in a company that goes bankrupt, is that a gain or a loss? | I'll give the credit to @Quid in the comments section of the question. You put out $10k, you got back $20k, that's a cash gain of $10k, how the asset was valued between your purchase and sale isn't relevant. From an accounting perspective, the company is the only party that is realizing the loss (as they have sold the asset for 40K less than par). You the buyer, only get to see the initial buy and sale of such capital asset. Example: A company purchases a car for $20,000 and after depreciation it is worth (book valued at) $2,000. It is then sold to a customer for $3,000. Does the customer realize a loss of $1,000? No. Does the company realize a gain of $1,000? Yes. Your bank analogy is flawed in two ways: |
Privacy preferences on creditworthiness data | See the first item in the list: For our everyday business purposes – such as to process your transactions, maintain your account(s), respond to court orders and legal investigations, or report to credit bureaus Note that there's no option for you to limit this sharing. Credit reporting is the business need of the bank, not of the bureaus. They rely on them and others reporting it in their main business: lending. While you can limit the sharing with other banks/insurance companies/service providers so that you won't get offers from them based on the data shared by the bank, you cannot limit the credit reports themselves. |
When should I start an LLC for my side work? | An LLC is overkill for 99% of 1 man small businesses. Side-businesses should remain as sole proprieterships until they get much larger and need the benefits of the LLC laws. You can still bill through a company name if you want to start building a brand: And set aside 25% of your gross income for Uncle Sam. He wants you to file a Schedule C with your regular 1040 at tax time. He doesn't care about your company. He just wants your social security number with a big fat check stuck to it. Be sure to maximize your tax savings by tracking your expenses like a hawk. Every mile is worth 50 cents. I recommend using a tracking system like the TaxMinimiser.com (buy the $4 version to see if you like it). Bottom line: EARN MONEY. Don't set up a "corporation". |
Why are bank transactions not instant? | If you want your bank to pay $1 to a beneficiary Bob, then the service (no matter how implemented) needs to result in Bob's bank saying to Bob "Hey, I owe you $1". The usual way how this is done consists of two parts - your bank needs to somehow tell Bob's bank "hey guys, do us a favor and please give Bob $1 with a message from the sender", and your bank needs to convince the other bank that they'll pay for (cover) that. This is the main source for the delays in international payments - there are thousands of banks, and most of possible pairs have no legal contact between themselves whatsoever, no bilateral agreements, no trust and no reasonable enforcement mechanism for small claims. If I'm Bob's bank, then a random bank from anywhere from Switzerland to Nigeria can send me an instruction "give Bob $1, we'll make it up for you", the SWIFT network is a common way of doing this. However, most likely I'm going to give Bob the money only after I receive the funds somehow, which means that they have given the money to some institution I work with. For payments within a single country, it often is a centralized exchange or a central bank, and the payment speed is then determined by the details of that particular single payment network - e.g. UK Faster Payments or the various systems used in USA. For international payments, it may require a chain of multiple intermediaries (correspondent banks) - for example, a payment of $1mm from Kazakhstan to China will likely involve the Kazakhstan bank asking their main correspondent in USA (some major bank such as Chase JPMorgan) to give the money to the relevant chinese bank's correspondent in USA (say, Citi) to then give the money to that chinese bank to then give the money to the actual recipient. Each of those steps can happen because those entities have bilateral agreements, trust and accounts with each other; and each of those steps generally takes time and verification. If you want all payments to happen instantly, then you need all institutions to join a single binding payment system. It's not as easy as it sounds, as it is a nightmare of jurisdiction - for example, if you'd want me (as Bob's bank) to credit Bob instantly, then the system needs to provide solid guarantees that I would get paid even if (a) the payer institution changes its mind, made a mistake or intentional fraud; (b) the payer institution goes insolvent; (c) the system provider gets insolvent. Providing such guarantees is expensive, they need to be backed by multi-billion capital, and they're unrealistic to enforce across jurisdictions (e.g. would an Iranian bank get recourse if some funds got blocked because of USA sanctions). The biggest such project as far as I know is SEPA, across most of Europe. Visa and MasterCard networks perform the same function - a merchant gets paid by the CC network even if the payer can't pay his CC bill or the paying bank goes insolvent. |
Excessive Credit Check from Comcast | In general, it is unusual for a credit check to occur when you are terminating a contract, since you are no longer requesting credit. If the credit check was a "hard pull" it will stay on your credit report for 2 years, but will only have an impact on your credit score for up to 12 months. If the check is a "soft pull" it has no impact on your credit score. Since you're past the 12 months boundary anyway, I wouldn't worry about it. That being said, please feel free to continue your investigation and report back if you can get Comcast to admit they performed the 2nd credit check. I'm sure we'd all be interested to hear their explanation for it. |
why if change manufacturing of a product not change the price for the buyer? | In highly developed and competitive industries companies tread a continuous and very fine line between maximising shareholder profits by keeping prices up while making products as cheaply as possible, vs competitors lowering prices when they work out a way to make equivalents cheaper. In the short run you will quite often see companies hold onto large portions of efficiency savings (particularly if they make a major breakthrough in a specific manufacturing process etc) by holding old prices up, but in the long run competition pretty quickly lowers prices as the companies trying to keep high margins and prices get ruthlessly undercut by smaller competitors happy to make a bit less. |
I'm self-employed with my own LLC. How should I pay myself, given my situation? | You're conflating LLC with Corporation. They're different animals. LLC does not have "S" or "C" designations, those are just for corporations. I think what you're thinking about is electing pass through status with the IRS. This is the easiest way to go. The company can pay you at irregular intervals in irregular amounts. The IRS doesn't care about these payments. The company will show profit or loss at the end of the year (those payments to you aren't expenses and don't reduce your profit). You report this on your schedule C and pay tax on that amount. (Your state tax authority will have its own rules about how this works.) Alternatively you can elect to have the LLC taxed as a corporation. I don't know of a good reason why someone in your situation would do this, but I'm not an accountant so there may be reasons out there. My recommendation is to get an accountant to prepare your taxes. At least once -- if your situation is the same next year you can use the previous year's forms to figure out what you need to fill in. The investment of a couple hundred dollars is worthwhile. On the question of buying a home in the next couple of years... yes, it does affect things. (Pass through status? Probably doesn't affect much.) If all of your income is coming from self-employment, be prepared for hassles when you are shopping for a mortgage. You can ask around, maybe you have a friendly loan officer at your credit union who knows your history. But in general they will want to see at least two years of self-employment tax returns. You can plan for this in advance: talk to a couple of loan officers now to see what the requirements will be. That way you can plan to be ready when the time comes. |
Tax planning for Indian TDS on international payments | I am an Israeli based citizen who represents and Indian company who sells its products in Israel. As an agent I am entitled to commission on sales on behalf the Indian company who advised that. Any commission paid to you will be applicable to TDS at 20.9% of the commission amount, the tax will be paid and a Tax paid certificate will be given to you. According to a Bilateral Double tax avoidance treaty if the tax has been deducted in India you will get credit for this tax in Israel. |
What percentage of my company should I have if I only put money? | Question (which you need to ask yourself): How well are your friends paid for their work? What would happen if you just took your money and bought a garage, and hired two car mechanics? How would that be different from what you are doing? The money that you put into the company, is that paid in capital, or is it a loan to the company that will be repaid? |
Is the repayment of monies loaned to my company considered income? | I'm a Finance major in Finland and here is how it would go here. As you loan money to the company, the company has no income, but gains an asset and a liability. When the company then uses the money to pay the bills it does have expenses that accumulate to the end of the accounting period where they have to be declared. These expenses are payed from the asset gained and has no effect to the liability. When the company then makes a profit it is taxable. How ever this taxable profit may be deducted from from a tax reserve accumulated over the last loss periods up to ten years. When the company then pays the loan back it is divided in principal and interest. The principal payment is a deduction in the company's liabilities and has no tax effect. The interest payment the again does have effect in taxes in the way of decreasing them. On your personal side giving loan has no effect. Getting the principal back has no effect. Getting interest for the loan is taxable income. When there are documents signifying the giving the loan and accounting it over the years, there should be no problem paying it back. |
UK companies house - what can I glean from an abbreviated balance sheet? | What this abbreviated balance sheet tells you is that this company has negative equity. The liabilities are greater than the value of the assets. The obvious problem for the company who wants to do business with you is that they are going to have a real hard time accessing credit to pay off any debts that they incur with doing business with you. In this case, the recommended course would be to ask them put cash up front instead of putting them on account. You don't really need to look at the income statement to see that they are currently underwater. If their income statement turns out to be splendid, then you can wait for them to get their liabilities under control before you set up an account for them. |
US Self-Employment Tax: Do expenses stack with the 50% SE deduction? | Business expenses reduce business income. The SE tax is paid on business income. The credit for 1/2 the SE tax is based on the amount of SE tax paid. So: |
UK limited company and personal bank account | I don't think there is a legal requirement that you need a separate bank account. Just remember that you can only take money from your LLC as salary (paying tax), as dividend (paying tax), or as a loan (which you need to repay, including and especially if the LLC goes bankrupt). So make very sure that your books are in order. |
Challenged an apparently bogus credit card charge, what happens now? | Yes. For $15 it's not worth anyone's time to dig deep just for this specific occurrence. What you should do, however, is keep an eye on your credit card bills and accounts and watch for any other suspicious activity. It is possible that your number was stolen somehow and someone is using it fraudulently, so you want to be on the lookout in case they try to use it again. However, your credit card company is going to be much, much better than you at detecting patterns of fraud, which is why you should leave it to them unless and until you actually see more suspicious activity. |
Can limits be placed by a merchant on which currency notes are accepted as legal tender? [duplicate] | Can they reject a hundred dollar bill as a payment of debt?! No. A creditor cannot refuse payment in cash, whatever denomination you use. HOWEVER, when you're buying stuff - you don't owe anything to the business owner. There's no debt, so the above rule doesn't apply. As long as there's no debt in existence, the matter of payment is decided between two parties based on the mutual agreement. The demand not to use large bills is reasonable in places like 7/11 or taxi-cab that are frequently robbed, or at a small retailer that doesn't want to invest into forgery detection and fraud prevention. So the answer to this question: Is it the case where this practice of accepting small bills and rejecting large bills is perfectly legal? Is yes. You can find the full explanation on Treasury.gov, including code references. |
How to invest 10k dollars, at the age of 23? | An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest, as Ben Franklin said. However, this is not a question I can answer for you, as it depends on the opportunities that are specifically available to you as an individual. Sometimes opportunities will knock on your door and you can take advantage, other times you have to create that door to allow opportunities to knock. Maybe you have a friend that is opening a side business, maybe there is a class you can get into at a trivial cost. What I suggest is to start investing just to get into the habit of it, not so much for the returns. Before you do, however, any financial advisor will advise you to begin with a emergency fund, worth about 3-6 months of your expenses for that time. I wanted to hit the ground running and start investing in stocks, but first things first I guess. "Millionaire Next Door" will help you get into a saving mindset, "I will teach you to be rich" is ok, plenty of other books. My advice is keep doing what you're doing, learn to start saving, and once you have obtained an emergency fund of the amount of your choosing, start looking to invest in Index Funds or ETFs through any platform that has LOW FEES!! I use Betterment, but Vanguard is good too, as they allow you to get your feet wet and it's passive. Hope this helps. |
How to represent “out of pocket” purchases in general ledger journal entry? | You're lending the money to your business by paying for it directly. The company accounts must reflect a credit (the amount you lend to it) and a debit (what it then puts that loan towards). It's fairly normal for a small(ish) owner-driven company to reflect a large loan-account for the owners. For example, if you have a room at home dedicated for the business it is impractical to pay rent directly via the company. The rental agreement is probably in your name, you pay the rent, and you reconcile it with the company later. You could even charge your company (taxable) interest on this loan. When you draw down the loan from the company you reverse this, debit your loan account and credit the company (paying off the debt). As far as tracking that expenditure, simply handle those third-party invoices in the normal way and file them for reference. |
Why would selling off some stores improve a company's value? | I'd like to modify the "loss" idea that's been mentioned in the other two answers. I don't think a retail location needs to be losing money to be a candidate for sale. Even if a retail location is not operating at a loss, there may be incentive to sell it off to free up cash for a better-performing line of business. Many large companies have multiple lines of business. I imagine Sunoco makes money a few ways including: refining the gas and other petroleum products, selling those petroleum products, selling gas wholesale to franchised outlets or other large buyers, licensing their brand to franchised outlets, selling gas and convenience items direct to consumers through its own corporate-owned retail outlets, etc. If a company with multiple lines of business sees a better return on investment in certain businesses, it may make sense to sell off assets in an under-performing business in order to free up the capital tied up by that business, and invest the freed-up capital in another business likely to perform better. So, even "money making" assets are sometimes undesirable relative to other, better performing assets. Another case in which it makes sense to sell an asset that is profitable is when the market is over-valuing it. Sell it dear, and buy it back cheap later. |
How important is reconciling accounts for a small LLC (Quickbooks)? | I would suggest opening a new account (credit card and bank) for just your business. This protects you in multiple ways, but is no bigger burden for you other than carrying another card in your wallet. Then QB can download the transactions from your website and reconciling is a cinch. If you got audited, you'd be in for a world of pain right now. From personal experience there are a few charges that go unnoticed that reconciling finds every month at our business. We have a very strict process in place, but some things slip through the cracks. |
Get the maximum interest rate from a bank on short term holdings | You can open Savings Bank Account with some Banks that offer better interest rate. Note there would be restriction on number of withdrawals in quarter. There are better interest rates if you lock in for 90+ days. The other option to explore is to open a Demat / Brokrage account and invest in liquid funds. Note depending on various factors it may or may not suite your requirements. |
If a stock is selling for less than book value, is the company headed for bankruptcy? | An answer can be found in my book, "A Modern Approach to Graham and Dodd Investing," p. 89 http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Approach-Graham-Investing-Finance/dp/0471584150/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321628992&sr=1-1 "If a company has no sustained cash flow over time, it has no value...If a company has positive cash flow but economic earnings are zero or less, it has a value less than book value and is a wasting asset. There is enough cash to pay interim dividends, bu the net present value of the dividend stream is less than book value." A company with a stock trading below book value is believed to be "impaired," perhaps because assets are overstated. Depending on the situation, it may or may not be a bankruptcy candidate. |
How do I get bill collectors who call about people I know to stop calling me? | http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf if you are in the US Look at section 805 and 805 about how they may contact you and what they are and aren't allowed to do. You can simply send a Certified Mail, Return Receipt (CMRR) letter explaining you have no part of it, and that they are not allowed to contact you by any means other than in writing from this point forward. Then you can either put return to sender on the letters (it costs them money) or open them and delete anything you don't need. |
Is there a reason to buy a 0% yield bond? | 0% bonds are desirable for some individuals. It depends on your situation. 0% bonds are usually sold well below par value (eg a 100$ face value bond for 2020 might sell for 90$ today) Hence, your gains will be CAPITAL GAINS. A similar investment paying interest would be taxed as INCOME, and smaller portion of capital gains. In many countries (US, Canada) Capital gains are taxed at a more favourable rate then income. This is especially true when holding these investments in corporations. |
What are the implications of lending money to my sole member S-corp? | You can make a capital contribution, not a loan. It's not a taxable event, no interest, and you can take a distribution later when the business has the money to pay you back. So yes, transfer the money. If you use software like Quickbooks, make use of unique accounts for tracking the contribution |
Foreign Earned Income Exclusion - Service vs. Product? | As the name says, its for income earned in a Foreign country. If you have been paying US income tax on this while living in the US, nothing is going to change here. You should be informing yourself on how to avoid double taxation in your new country of residence. Passive income earned abroad (dividends, interest) also do not fall under this exemption. The purpose of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion is to make it easy for expats who work abroad to avoid double income taxation without going through the complicated process of applying for tax credits. The US is the only industrial country that taxes its residents regardless of where they reside. That is also why it only goes to about $100,000 a year. If you are a high earner, they want to make it more difficult. Also as a side note, since you are going to be abroad for a year. I will point out that if you have more than $10,000 in foreign accounts at any point in the year you need to declare this in an FBAR form. This is not advertised as well as it should be and carries ridiculous penalties for non-compliance. I can't count the number of times I have heard a US expat say that they were unaware of this. |
Should a retail trader bother about reading SEC filings | I use 10-K and 10-Qs to understand to read the disclosed risk factors related to a business. Sometimes they are very comical. But when you see that risk factor materializing you can understand how it will effect the company. For example, one microlending company's risk factor stated that if Elizabeth Warren becomes head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau we will have a hard time... so we are expanding in Mexico and taking our politically unfavorable lending practices there. I like seeing how many authorized shares there are or if there are plans to issue more. An example was where I heard from former employees of a company how gullible the other employees at that company were and how they all thought they were going to get rich or were being told so by upper management. Poor/Quirky/Questionable/Misleading management is one of my favorite things to look for in a company so I started digging into their SEC filings and saw that they were going to do a reverse split which would make the share prices trade higher (while experiencing no change in market cap), but then digging further I saw that they were only changing the already issued shares, but keeping the authorized shares at the much larger amount of shares, and that they planned to do financing by issuing more of the authorized shares. I exclaimed that this would mean the share prices would drop by 90%-99% after the reverse split and you mean to tell me that nobody realizes this (employees or the broad market). I was almost tempted to stand outside their office and ask employees if I could borrow their shares to short, because there wasn't enough liquidity on the stock market! This was almost the perfect short but it wasn't liquid or have any options so not perfect after all. It traded from $20 after the reverse split to $1.27 I like understanding how much debt a company is in and the structure of that debt, like if a loan shark has large payments coming up soon. This is generally what I use those particular forms for. But they contain a lot of information A lot of companies are able to act they way they do because people do not read. |
What should I be aware of when renting a home to a corporation instead of an individual? | This is business as usual, except that you need to keep in mind that the corporate entity is separate from the individual. As such - all the background checks and references should be with regards to the actual renter - the corporation. You should be cautious as it is not so easy to dissolve an individual (well... Not as easy, and certainly not as legal), as it is to dissolve the corporation. So you may end up with a tenant who doesn't pay and doesn't have to pay because the actual renter, the corporation, no longer exists. So check the corporation background - age, credit worthiness, tax returns/business activity, judgements against, etc etc, as you would do for an individual. |
Will one’s education loan application be rejected if one doesn't have a payslip providing collateral? | A bank can reject a loan if they feel you do not meet the eligibility criteria. You can talk to few banks and find out. |
Transfering funds from India to the US | Can I transfer funds from India to USA which I have borrowed in India. Funds borrowed in India may not be transferred outside of India as per Foreign Exchange Management Act. Loans in rupees to non-residents against security of shares or immovable property in India:- Subject to the directions issued by the Reserve Bank from time to time in this regard, an authorised dealer in India may grant loan to a non-resident Indian, e) the loan amount shall not be remitted outside India; |
Canadian accepting money electronically from Americans | I am not aware of a version of Interac available in the U.S., but there are alternative ways to receive money: Cheque. The problem with mailed cheques is that they take time to deliver, and time to clear. If you ship your wares before the cheque has cleared and the cheque is bad, you're out the merchandise. COD. How this works is you place a COD charge on your item at the post office in the amount you charge the customer. The post office delivers the package on the other end when the customer pays. The post office pays you at the time you send the package. There is a fee for this, talk to your local post office or visit the Canada Post website. Money order. Have your U.S. customers send an International Money Order, not a Domestic Money Order. Domestic money orders can only be cashed at a U.S. post office. The problem here is again delivery time, and verifying your customer sent an International Money Order. It can be a pain to have to send back a Domestic Money Order to a customer explaining what they have to do to pay you, even more painful if you don't catch the error before shipping your wares. Credit Card. There are a number of companies offering credit card processing that are much cheaper than a bank. PayPal, Square, and Intuit are three such companies offering these services. After I did my investigations I found Square to be the best deal for me. Please do your own research on these companies (and banks!) and find out which one makes the most sense for you. Some transaction companies may forbid the processing of payment for e-cig materials as they my be classed as tobacco. |
Self-directed RRSP into mortgage investment | The Globe and Mail has an interesting article on what you can do with your RRSPs. Be aware that the article is from early 2011 and rules change. They describe holding your own mortgage inside your RRSP. That is, if you have $100,000 inside your RRSP already and your remaining mortgage is $100,000, you can use that money to pay off your mortgage, then pay back the money at interest, generating a tax-deferred profit inside your RRSP. That approach may be viable, though you'd want to talk to your accountant first. I'd be very cautious about loaning money to someone else for a second mortgage using my RRSP, though. Second mortgages are inherently risky, so this is a very speculative investment. Once you make an RRSP contribution, that space is used up (barring a couple of exceptions such as the life-long learning plan). So, let's say you used $100,000 of your RRSP to loan to someone for a second mortgage. Any interest payments should be sheltered inside the RRSP (substantial benefit), but if the person defaults on the second mortgage (which you should expect to be a significant possibility), you've lost your entire $100,000 contribution room (as well as, obviously, the $100,000 that you loaned out). I can't tell you whether or not it makes sense to invest in risky second-mortgage loans and I can't tell you whether, if you choose to do so, it definitely should be done inside an RRSP. There are substantial risks in the loan and there are both costs and benefits to doing so inside an RRSP. Hopefully, though, I've helped you understand the questions you should be asking yourself. |
How May Cash be Spent Approaching Bankruptcy? | Bankruptcy law is complex. You need a lawyer who can advise you both on the statute and relevant case law for the district where you file. Your lawyer can advise you whether actions you contemplate are allowed. You can obtain advice prior to filing as you seek to determine whether the law and the relief it offers are suitable to your situation. Anyone considering filing BK should know that they will need to provide fairly extensive information. You should learn about BK as you seek to understand whether that path is the best for your situation. You should ask your lawyer specific questions about your situation and try to learn as much as you can. You should read about the problems with taking out debt or making debt repayments to creditors (especially family) prior to filing BK. These actions could impact your case and cause it to be dismissed, and could even be considered criminal (again, you need a lawyer). Some things to learn about as you contemplate Bankruptcy Be aware that BK is federal law, and you will be required to provide extensive information about your financial situation. You will be required to show up for the creditors meeting and testify that you have provided correct information. The trustee may (will) supply objections to which you and your lawyer will need to respond. Among other things, you will supply, You should seek legal advice about things that might become important, Even though you will have guidance from your lawyer, you are the one seeking relief, and you need to understand your own situation and the law. |
Accidentally opened a year term CD account, then realized I need the money sooner. What to do? | In my experience, the only penalty to breaking a CD is to lose a certain amount of accumulated interest. Your principal investment will be fine. Close the CD. A few days of interest is nothing. |
ACH debit blocks/filters on consumer account | The technical feature exists to (1)block all ACH activity, (2)block all ACH credits, or (3)block all ACH debits attempting to post to the deposit account. The large financial institutions will not deviate from their company policies and won't offer something like this for a personal account. The smaller institutions and credit unions are much more willing to discuss options. Especially if you maintain a large deposit balance or have many products with the institution, you might convince them this feature is very important and insist they block all ACH activity on your account. This feature is used frequently on controlled asset accounts where the balance must be frozen for a variety of reasons. |
Is there a difference between managerial accounting and financial accounting? | From Wikipedia: Managerial accounting is used primarily by those within a company or organization. Reports can be generated for any period of time such as daily, weekly or monthly. Reports are considered to be "future looking" and have forecasting value to those within the company.** Financial accounting is used primarily by those outside of a company or organization. Financial reports are usually created for a set period of time, such as a fiscal year or period. Financial reports are historically factual and have predictive value to those who wish to make financial decisions or investments in a company. At my university, managerial accounting focused more on the details of how costs were managed in the company, the future of the business, etc. while the courses that were considered financial accounting were more from the point of view of a financial analyst or investor, like you said. The financial accountancy material covered analysis of financial statements and the associated investment decisions, among other things. These areas overlapped in areas like the production of financial statements, since the company also needs to consider how analysts will interpret these statements, and dividend policy, corporate tax accounting, etc. The Wikipedia articles on managerial accounting and financial accounting may provide helpful information as well. Disclaimer: I took an introductory accounting course in university and nothing more, so my knowledge of the course structures, even at my alma mater, is secondhand recollection at best. I'm sure there are more similarities and differences of which I'm unaware, and I would assume that forensic accountants, auditors, etc. dabble in both these areas and others. |
How to register LLC in the US from India? [duplicate] | Wyoming is a good state for this. It is inexpensive and annual compliance is minimal. Although Delaware has the best advertising campaign, so people know about it, the reality is that there are over 50 states/jurisdictions in the United States with their own competitive incorporation laws to attract investment (as well as their own legislative bodies that change those laws), so you just have to read the laws to find a state that is favorable for you. What I mean is that whatever Delaware does to get in the news about its easy business laws, has been mimicked and done even better by other states by this point in time. And regarding Delaware's Chancery Court, all other states in the union can also lean on Delaware case law, so this perk is not unique to Delaware. Wyoming is cheaper than Delaware for nominal presence in the United States, requires less information then Delaware, and is also tax free. A "registered agent" can get you set up and you can find one to help you with the address dilemma. This should only cost $99 - $200 over the state fees. An LLC does not need to have an address in the United States, but many registered agents will let you use their address, just ask. Many kinds of businesses still require a bank account for domestic and global trade. Many don't require any financial intermediary any more to receive payments. But if you do need this, then opening a bank account in the United States will be more difficult. Again, the registered agent or lawyer can get a Tax Identification Number for you from the IRS, and this will be necessary to open a US bank account. But it is more likely that you will need an employee or nominee director in the United States to go in person to a bank and open an account. This person needs to be mentioned in the Operating Agreement or other official form on the incorporation documents. They will simply walk into a bank with your articles of incorporation and operating agreement showing that they are authorized to act on behalf of the entity and open a bank account. They then resign, and this is a private document between the LLC and the employee. But you will be able to receive and accept payments and access the global financial system now. A lot of multinational entities set up subsidiaries in a number of countries this way. |
Can dividends be exploited? | No, the dividends can't be exploited like that. Dividends settlement are tied to an ex-dividend date. The ex-dividend, is the day that allows you to get a dividend if you own the stock. Since a buyer of the stock after this date won't get the dividend, the price usually drop by the amount of the dividend. In your case the price of a share would lose $2.65 and you will be credited by $2.65 in cash such that your portfolio won't change in value due to the dividend. Also, you can't exploit the drop in price by short-selling, as you would be owing the dividend to the person lending you the stock for the short sale. Finally, the price of the stock at the ex-dividend will also be affected by the supply and demand, such that you can't be precisely sure of the drop in price of the security. |
How to prevent misusing my Account details | This is more legal and less personal finance question. You should immediately lodge a police complaint mentioning that some persons are using your PAN card details for activities not authorized by you. In the meantime also engage the services of a CA and reply back to income tax authorities. Do not ignore the notice. |
Why does the Brexit cause a fall in crude oil prices? | Uncertainty has very far reaching effects. Oil is up ~100% since February and down ~40% from it's 52 week high (and down even more on a longer timeline). It's not exactly a stable investment vehicle and moves a few percent each day on basically nothing. A lot of securities will be bouncing around for the next couple weeks at least while folks remain uncertain about what the "brexit" will actually mean. |
Why can't I short a stock that sells for less than $5? Is there another way to “go short” on them? | If this is the initial transaction, the rules of a short margin account say that if you shorted 1000 share of ABC at $5/share your credit balance would be $5000 from the short plus you would have to put up yourself $5000 cash or $10,000 of marginal securities. So this is not really leveraging using margin. You have to put in just as much as the short generates. Is that what this relates to? Once the initial purchase has been made the minimum maintenance for a stock trading under $5 per share is 100% of the short market value in the margin account or $2.50 per share whichever is greater. For stock trading at $5/share or greater the minimum maintenance requirement is $5/share or 30% of the short market value, whichever is greater. The minimum maintenance requirements can be tighter. |
Tax exemption on personal loan interest component in India | Am I eligible for the tax exemption if yes then under which section. Generally Personal loans are not eligible for tax exemption. Only housing loans from qualified institutions are eligible for tax deduction. As per the income tax act; The house should be in your name. The home loans taken from recognised institutions are fully qualified under section 24B and 80C. This means you can claim Interest exemption under 24B and Principal repayment under 80C. The Act also specifies that loan can be taken from friends/relatives for construction of property and will be eligible for Interest exemption under 24B only. The principal will not be eligible for exemption under 80C. Read the FAQ from Income Tax India. There has to be certificate showing how much interest was paid on the said loan. Further there should be records/receipts on how the money was spent. There is difference of opinion amongst CA. It is best you take a professional advise. |
Is having a 'startup fund' a good idea? | Saving money for the future is a good thing. Whether spending those savings on a business venture makes sense, will depend on a few factors, including: (1) How much money you need that business to make [ie: will you be quitting your job and relying on the business for your sole income? Or will this just be a hobby you make some pocket change from?] (2) How much the money the business needs up front [some businesses, like simple web design consulting, might have effectively $0 in cash startup costs, where starting a franchise restaurant might cost you $500k-$1M on day 1] (3) How risky it is [the general stat is that something like 50% of all new businesses fail in their first year, and I think for restaurants that number is often given as 75%+] But if you don't have a business idea yet, and save for one in the future but never get that 'perfect idea', the good news is that you've saved a bunch of money that you can instead use for retirement, or whatever other financial goals you have. So it's not the saving for a new business that is risky, it's the spending. Part of good personal financial management is making financial goals, tracking your progress to those goals, and changing them as needed. In a simpler case, many people want to own their own home - this is a common financial goal, just like early retirement, or starting your own business, or paying for your kids' college education. All those goals are helped by saving money, so your job as someone mindful of personal finances, is to prioritize those goals in accordance to what is important for you. |
Supporting a Kickstarter project: Should a customer's pledge payment include sales tax, e.g. GST/HST in Canada? | You can only claim an input tax credit if tax was actually collected by the seller, irrespective of whether it should have been or not. You need to contact the seller to request an invoice that shows the GST/HST, if any, as well as the seller's GST/HST number, which is required to be printed on invoices. If the seller is not including GST/HST in the prices indicated on Kickstarter, I would like to know how they get away with that! |
Buying from an aggressive salesperson | From your question and how you have framed it, I get you find Agressive Sales tactics disturb the buying process for you. ;) I understand because I also find the whole process of Research / Negotiating / Buying / Owning / Using is all on one continuum, so anything that ruins the process will likely lose the sale or enjoyment of the item, at the end of the day. [Very long answer .... Sorry :) ] The answer to this is to KNOW what you want before you have to deal with the Sales people. A good Sales person likes a customer who knows what they want. I would suggest that you follow my 'Buying Process' (Much you have already done) : Before you Buy: Identify the item you want and the max/min 'realistic' price you would buy at. [Stick to this price else 'Buyers Remorse' may bite later.] Write the questions you have down on paper before you visit the Dealer. Write the answers you want on the same list, if known. Decide which questions are most important and therefore must get the answer you want. These should be the questions you ask first. Mark these on the list. Re-visit points 1-3 are they complete and to your satisfaction ? Would you buy if all the answers & the price are right ? If NO then re-visit point 1-3 else you are not ready to buy now !!! If YES then Organise your visit to the Dealer. [Book appointment etc if needed.] At Dealer: Meet your Sales person and clearly state what you want (the item) and importantly when you intend to buy, if all your questions are answered to your satisfaction. There is no need to discuss price at this point as the 'haggling' is only possible IF the questions are answered to your satisfaction. Do not give information such as your maximum budget or similar requests, as they give the sales person the upper hand to maximise his/her pricing. If asked state that your budget is conditional on the answers you get. As the questions are answered assess the answer and assign +/- to the question on your list. If any of your most critical / important questions are answered in the negative, they are the reasons you have to call it a day and walk out. You can assess whether they are worth ignoring but you will need to factor this into your price and if you have identified your questions correctly there should be little room for debate. Assuming you have got all your questions answered you should know what you are buying and have assessed what is a reasonable price for it, if you still want it as this point. If you have lost interest, say so and let the Sales person go. Don't waste their time. They may make some sort of offer to you BUT don't forget that if you have doubts now they will not go away easily no matter what the 'great' price is. If you want it then continue. Buying your Item: [None of the following is really usefull if you have told the Sales person your Budget, as they will be aiming for the highest end of your budget. You will often find that the best price is very close to your maximum budget !!! :)] Do not forget your realistic price range, this should limit your buying price no matter what tactics are used by the Sales person. Only you know what you are prepared to pay and if an extra 1% or 50% is considered worth it to you, if you have to have the item :) Regardless, you have to have some idea of your limit and be prepared to stick to it. You must be able to walk away if the price is silly and not worth it. Assuming you have not been smitten by your item and funds are NOT unlimited, ask for the price and assess it against your price range. At this point I can only offer pointers as there are no 'magic' rules to get what you want at the lowest price. The only advice I would offer is that you will be lucky to get something at your 1st offer price unless the seller really needs to sell, because of this your 1st offer should be less than your price range lowest band. You will need to assess how much less but be prepared to get a 'No' response. If you get a 'Yes' and your research is good 'Buy It !!!' If you get too enthusiastic a response, question your research & if not sure bail out [No Sale] :) At this point you are likely to be 'Haggling' so you need to be ready for all the 'Must buy Now' tactics. If you have clearly stated your wants and timescales there is no reason to be pulled in by these tactics and they can be ignored until the price has reached the level you are happy with. If the price is not moving where you want than clearly state you cannot 'buy at that price'. If you get a total stop and no movement than you need to assess your 'need' and if priced too high then you should walk out. Remember if you stated that you had a timescale to buy of 1/2/3 weeks you should act like you have 1/2/3 weeks to keep looking. Any eagerness on your part will tell the Sales person that you have lied !!! :) You can always come back and try again, reminding the Sales person that the 'item' is still there and perhaps it is priced too high to sell and make the same offer. !!! (A bit of cheek sometimes works.) If the price is close and you still want it and the Sales person is not moving you need to try walking out while stating that you would love the 'item' if it was priced better, if no improved offer as you go, try an increased offer but again you need to assess how much and remember you can only go up, or walk out and come back another day. If the price is at a level you are happy with then you should have no reason not to buy (if you have followed this process) but this does not mean that you should be forced into buying now if you do not want to. Regardless of any 'Must buy now' tactics if the price is right and you cannot buy now, tell the Sales person when you CAN buy and see if you can get an agreement with this. It is unfair to expect a price to be held for an indeterminate time, so you do need to state when you could buy if not now when a price has been agreed. This is a point where the deal may break down if the Sales person thinks they have a sale and trys to force the Sale now. Once again you have to assess your 'need' and whether buying now is better than walking out. If the deal breaks down there is nothing stopping you from coming back and offering the same price when you can buy. A final option is to agree if a deposit can be left to reserve the item until you can buy. This gives the Sales person some assurance that you will come back and is sometimes NON-Refundable unless you agree otherwise before you pay, so check this detail first. (This tends to be smaller Dealers but generally in the UK the large companies offer refundable deposits as part of their Customer Service, the advantage of using larger Stores/Dealers etc.) Apologies for the epic reply, hope it helps. |
Landlord Tax Relief Changes UK | This article on the landlord website Property118.com shows a simple example, demonstrating that a private landlord with a mortgage could see a huge jump in their effective tax rate (in this case, from 18% to 67% by 2020), while a corporate landlord will see no change at all. There's also a link in that article to a detailed report which is highly critical of the tax changes. The government obviously take a different view! (See here for more worked examples of how the tax changes will be applied). More information can be found on this on various landlord sites. A key phrase to look for is "section 24", referring to the section of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015 which implements the change. Note that this change only applies to private landlords (i.e. those who own a property personally, rather than through a company), and who have a mortgage on the property, and who (after the new calculations) are higher or additional rate taxpayers. |
Loan to S-Corp cannot be paid back, how to deduct from personal taxes? | Once the business is shut down, you'll need to show that the corporation is in bankruptcy and the amounts are unrecoverable. You can then report it as investment loss. I suggest talking to a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State), and maybe an attorney, on what the specific technical details are. |
Mortgage implications if I were to quit my job shortly after being approved? | You mention that you would quit right after getting approved. But in the United States there would be one last check as a part of closing. Therefore it would be best to wait until after closing to quit your job. Waiting until after closing would also protect you from some hiccup that causes a delay in closing, thus requiring the need to reapply for the loan. |
Beyond RRSP deductions, how does a high income earner save on taxes? | That's not especially high income, and while I can't speak for Canadians, most of us south of the border just pay the tax. There are tax-advantged retirement savings plans, and charitable donations are often offset by a tax credit, and there are some tax incentives for mortgages, and so on.. but generally the right answer is to just accept that the income tax money was never yours to begin with. |
Receive credit card payment sending my customer details to a credit card processing company? | Yes, there are a bunch. I have used Paypal and it worked quite nicely. I see endless ads these days for Square, a tiny card reader that you plug into a smartphone that lets you swipe the card. (With Paypal you have to type in the credit card number.) |
How to categorize credit card payments? | Using the Transfer category is the best place to put these categories, as that accurately reflects what the transaction is. If you have your credit card and bank account linked in Mint, the debit and credit to both accounts will net to $0 in the category. I would not recommend using "Hide from budget and trends" as sometimes multiple (erroneous) transactions pop up and having a category that should but, in error, does not net to $0 will raise your attention to possibly duplicate transactions. You can ask Mint to always categorize certain transactions in certain ways. On any of your payments, if you click "Edit Details" and then select the Transfer category, you can ask Mint to always make that classification: |
What would happen if the Euro currency went bust? | Krugman (Nobel prize in Economy) has just said: Greek euro exit, very possibly next month. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany. 3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals. 3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing. 4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or: 4b. End of the euro. And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/eurodammerung-2/ |
How does LLC ownership work in relation to U.S. tax law? | It really depends. If it is offered as compensation (ie in leiu of, or in addition to salary or cash bonus) then it would be reportable income, and if sold later for a profit then that would be taxable as gains. If this share is purchased as an investment at current value then it would be treated like other securities most likely gains realized at sale. Any discount could be considered income but there are some goofy rules surrounding this enacted to prevent tax evasion and some to spur growth. That is the answer in a nut shell. It is far more complicated in reality as there are somewhere around 2000 pages of regulations deal with different exceptions and scenerios. |
S Corp with Straddles Income | If this activity were to generate let's say 100K of profit, and the other corporate activities also generate 100K of revenue, are there any issues tax-wise I need to be concerned about? Yes. Having 25% or more of passive income in 3 consecutive years will invalidate your S-Corp status and you'll revert to C-Corp. Can I deduct normal business expenses from the straddles (which are taxed as short term capital gains) profit? I don't believe you can. You can deduct investment expenses from the investment income. On your individual tax return it will balance out, but you cannot mix types of income/expense on the corporate return or K-1. |
Is a robo-adviser worth the risk? | They've been around long enough now for there to be past performance figures you can google for. I think you'll find the results aren't very encouraging. I personally don't think there's a huge risk that the robots will lose all your money, but there's every reason to expect they aren't likely to perform better than traditional managers or beat the market. At the end of the day the robots are employing a lot of analysis and management techniques that traditional managers have been using, and since traditional managers use computers to do it efficiently there's not much gain IMO. Yes in theory labour is expensive so cutting it out is good, but in practise, in this case, the amount of money being managed is huge and the human cost is pretty insignificant. I personally don't believe that the reduced fees represent the cost of the human management, I think it's just marketing. There might be some risk that the robots can be 'gamed' but I doubt the potential is very great (your return might in theory be a fraction of a percent less over time because it's going on). The problem here is that the algorithms are functionally broadly known. No doubt every robo adviser has its own algorithms that in theory are the closely guarded secret, but in reality a broad swath of the functional behaviour will be understood by many people in the right circles, and that gives rise to predictability, and if you can predict investment/trading patterns you can make money from those patterns. That means humans making money (taking margin away) from the robots, or robots making money from other robots that are behind the curve. If robo advisers continue to take off I would expect them to under perform more and more. |
What are the ins/outs of writing-off part of one's rent for working at home? | Tax regulations vary from country to country - some permitting more deductions, some less - but here are a few guidelines. As regards the home-office: As regards the deductions: Think of it like this: in order to have space for a home-office you needed a bigger home. That leads to increased rates, heating, insurance and so on. Many tax regulators recognise that these are genuine expenses. The alternative is to rent a separate office and incur greater expenses, leading to increased deductions and less overall tax paid (which won't finance the deficit). The usual test for deductions is: was the expense legitimately incurred in the pursuit of revenue? The flexibility permitted will vary by tax authority but you can frequently deduct more than you expected. |
What are the tax implications if I do some work for a company for trade, rather than pay? | Bartering is a tricky discussion. Yes, it definitely applies when you are self-employed and do a job that you would charge anyone else for, but what if you are helping a friend in your spare time? If you receive something in exchange, the value of the item you received would be your income, but what if you don't receive anything in exchange? If the company bought a computer that they loan to you to do occasional work for them, there's no reason you couldn't take the computer home and have that company retain ownership of the property. They could still expense the depreciation of the computer without giving it to you. If it were a car though, you would have to count mileage for personal use as income. What if you exchange occasional tech support for the use of an empty desk and Internet connection? As long as they aren't renting desks for money to others, there's probably no additional marginal cost to them if they allow you to use the space, so the fair market value question breaks down. |
Can anybody explain the terms “levered beta riders”, “equity long-short” and “the quant process driven discipline” for me, please? | Leverage here is referring to "financial leverage". This is the practice of "levering" [ie increasing, like the use of a lever to increase the amount of weight you can lift] the value of your investment by taking on debt. For example: if you have 100k in cash, you can buy a 100k rental property. Assume the property makes 10k a year, net of expenses [10%]. Now assume the bank will also give you a 100k mortgage, at 3%. You could take the mortgage, plus your cash, and buy a 200k rental property. This would earn you 20k from the rental property, less 3k a year in interest costs [the 3%]. Your total income would be 17k, and since you only used 100k of your own money, your rate of return would now be 17% instead of 10%. This is financial leveraging. Note that this increases your risk, because if your investment fails not only have you lost your own money, you now need to pay back the bank. "Beta riders" appears to be negative commentary on investors who use Beta to calculate the value of a particular stock, without regard to other quantitative factors. Therefore "leveraged beta riders" are those who take on additional risk [by taking on debt to invest], and invest in a manner that the author would perhaps considered "blindly" following Beta. However, I have never seen this term before, and it appears tainted by the author's views on Quants. A "quant process driven discipline" appears to be positive commentary on investors who use detailed quantitative analysis to develop rules which they rigorously follow to invest. I have never seen this exact phrasing before, and like the above, it appears tainted by the author's views on Quants. I am not providing any opinion on whether "beta riding" or "quant processes" are good or bad things; this is just my attempt to interpret the quote as you presented it. Note that I did not go to the article to get context, so perhaps something else in the article could skew the language to mean something other than what I have presented. |
what would you do with $100K saving? | 4) Beef up my emergency fund, make sure my 401(k) or IRA was fully funded, put the rest into investments. See many past answers. A house you are living in is not an investment. It is a purchase, just as rental is a purchase. Buying a house to rent out is starting a business. If you want to spend the ongoing time and effort and cash running a business, and if you can buy at the right time in the right place for the righr price, this can be a reasonable investment. If you aren't willing to suffer the pains of being a landlord, it's less attractive; you can hire someone to manage it for you but that cuts the income significantly. Starting a business: Remember that many, perhaps most, small businesses fail. If you really want to run a business it can be a good investment, again assuming you can buy at the right time/price/place and are willing and able to invest the time and effort and money to support the business. Nothing produces quick return with low risk. |
The formula equivalent of EBITDA for personal finance? | This should not be taken to be financial advice or guidance. My opinions are my own and do not represent professional advice or consultation on my part or that my employer. Now that we have that clear... Your idea is a very good one. I'm not sure about the benefits of a EBITDA for personal financial planning (or for financial analysis, for that matter, but we will that matter to the side). If you have a moderate (>$40,000) income, then taxes should be one the largest, if not the largest chunk of your paycheck out the door. I personally track my cash flow on a day-by-day basis. That is to say, I break out the actual cash payments (paychecks) that I receive and break them apart into the 14 day increments (paycheck/14). I then take my expenses and do the same. If you organize your expenses into categories, you will receive some meaningful numbers about your daily liquidity (i.e: cash flow before taxes, after taxes, cash flow after house expenses, ect) This serves two purposes. One, you will understand how much you can actually spend on a day-to-day basis. Second, once you realize your flexibility on a day-to-day basis, it is easy to plan and forecast your expenses. |
What are “upstream investments” and “downstream investments” in this context? | Upstream is into businesses that supply the original business; downstream is into businesses that make use of the original product. So in that description, what they are saying is that the original business received products from plantations and sent products to manufacturing. This is also called vertical integration. Meaning that they are diversifying along their supply chain so that they control more of it. This is in contrast with horizontal integration, where they move into new products that either compete with the existing products or which are entirely separate. In general, the upside of vertical integration is that a company is less reliant on suppliers (and intermediate consumers) and has more control over its supply chain. The downside is that they have less opportunity to partner with other companies in the same supply chain, as they compete with them. Some companies are better at managing to do both. For example, Amazon.com has integrated fulfillment and sales. But partners can still do their own fulfillment and/or sales, choosing how much to send out to Amazon. If you are investing in individual stocks, integrated companies can be problematic in that they cut across diversification areas. So they can be harder to balance with other stocks. You can either buy plantations, transport, and manufacturing together or not buy at all. If your investment strategy says to increase plantations and reduce manufacturing, this can be difficult to implement with an integrated company. Of course, everyone else has the same problem, which can lead to integrated companies being undervalued. So they may be an opportunity as a value stock. |
I am the sole owner of an LLC. Does it make a difference if I file as an S-Corp or a sole-member LLC? | Be careful of the other answers here. Many are wrong or partially wrong. The question implies that you knew this, but for everyone else's benefit, you can keep you LLC organization and still elect to be treated as a S-Corp by the IRS just for tax purposes. You do this by filing Form 2553 with the IRS. (You can also, by the way, elect to be taxed as a "regular" C-Corp if you want, although that's probably not advantageous. See Form 8832.) The advantage of electing to be treated as an S-Corp is that income beyond what constitutes a "reasonable salary" are not subject to social security and medicare taxes as they would when paid was wages or counted as self-employment income on Schedule C. Depending on what you need to pay yourself to meet the "reasonable salary" test, your overall income, and other factors about your business, this could result in tax savings. Contrary to other answers here, making this election will not force you to create a board of directors. You are still an LLC for all purposes except taxes, so whatever requirements you had in organization and governance at the state level will not change. You will have to file a "corporate" tax return on Form 1120S (and likely some corresponding state tax form), so that is additional paperwork, but this "corporate" return does not mean the S-Corp pays taxes itself. With a couple of exceptions, the S-Corp pays no taxes directly (and therefore does not pay at the corporate tax rate). Instead the S-Corp apportions its income, expenses, and deductions to the owner(s) on Schedule K. The owners get their portion reported from the S-Corp on Schedule K1 and then include that on their personal Form 1040 to pay tax at their personal rate. In addition to filing Form 1120S, you will have to handle payroll taxes, which will create some additional administrative work and/or cost. Using a payroll service for this will likely be your best option and not terribly expensive. You've also got the issue of determining your reasonable salary within the rules, which is the subject of other questions on this site and other IRS guidance. |
Why does it take 3 days to do electronic transfers between banks? [duplicate] | I was perplexed by this until a few days ago when it finally clicked in a meeting with our fraud and money laundering teams in work (I work on trading surveillance). Apparently fraud detection and prevention of money laundering are currently the biggest delayers when it comes to electronic transfer of funds, checking that the transferring party has the funds to transfer etc. takes no time at all. It takes some time for a bank user to "release" a funds transfer; once it has been initiated it is put into a queue to be reviewed as potentially fraudulent or money laundering activity. Almost every transaction has to be monitored for this from a legal standpoint. The compliance process can take multiple days. Once the process is complete the request also has to go through "settling" which is an end of day process whereby banks "net off" their customers' transactions with other banks and only pass the net value between them. This is an end of day process by nature so only happens once a day meaning that once all of the checks have occurred any transaction will take until the end of the day to crystallise for the bank and so get credited to their customers' accounts. Incidentally in the UK and Europe banks are moving to streamline this process through "faster payment" systems (that is the industry term for the technology) so that customers see the effect within a few hours (2 in the UK currently) and then the banks net off at the end of day as usual. This means reducing the time it takes to do the checks that have to be done using specialist software to flag transfers as potentially fraudulent or not and making banks' processes much clearer and faster. |
Swiss-style Monetary Policy | This is what is called "weasel words". They're trying to put some authority into their ad, but since they don't have any - they're putting meaningless words that sound important. Monetary policy is the state/central bank policy to control the supply of the available currency. Cannot think of a way to connect it to private investments. |
Early Retirement Options (UK) | Some people put money into Venture Capital Trusts for the yields they offer. The risks are different and they are considered higher risk than ordinary equities; you need to be a sophisticated investor or high net worth individual to consider them. https://www.wealthclub.co.uk/articles/investment-news/why-i-never-sold-vct/ I'm not recommending these for you, just pointing it out as another option as per the question. |
How to categorize shared income? | My company did not have income of $1000 and have a $500 expense Why not? Your company received $1000 from you, and based on its agreement with the other company - transferred out half of it. How does it not translate to having $1000 income and $500 expense? When I run a report I want to see that my business has $500 of income not $1000 with a $500 expense You can write in your reports whatever you want, but if you want to see the real picture, then that is exactly what you should be expecting. That said, transferring money from yourself to your company is generally not considered income. You can have it booked as owner's equity, or a owner's loan if the company is required to repay. Unless you're paying to your company for some services provided or assets transferred, that is. |
Why buy stock of a company instead of the holding company who has more than 99% of the stocks | In a situation like this, I presume you'd invest in the child company if you thought that the child company would increase in value at a higher rate than the parent. You'd invest in the parent company if you thought the parent company would perform well as a whole, but you did not want to assume the risk of an individual company underneath it. Say the child company is worth 100 million, and the parent company is worth 500 million. You've invested a sum of money in the child company. The child company performs very well, and increases in value by, say, 20 million. As the parent company owns the child, we could say it also increases in value by roughly 20 million. The difference is proportional - Your investment in the child sees a 20% gain in value, whereas your investment in the parent sees a 4% gain in total value, as in this example the parent company, which owns nearly 100% of the child company, is worth 5x more and thus proportionally sees 1/5 the increase in value, due to it being worth more as a whole. Think of it similarly to a mutual fund or ETF that invests in many different stocks on the market. As the market does well, that mutual fund or ETF does well, too. As the mutual fund is made up of many individual stocks, one stock performing very well, say at a 10-20% increase in value, does not raise the value of the ETF or mutual fund by 10-20%. The etf / mutual fund will perform slightly better (Assuming all other components remain equal for this example), but only proportionally to the fraction of it that's made up of the stock that's performing well. |
Can I pay estimated taxes based on last year's taxes if I anticipate more income this year? | You're interpreting this correctly. Furthermore, if your total tax liability is less than $1000, you can not pay estimates at all, just pay at the tax day. See this safe harbor rule in the IRS publication 17: General rule. In most cases, you must pay estimated tax for 2016 if both of the following apply. You expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2016, after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits. You expect your withholding plus your refundable credits to be less than the smaller of: 90% of the tax to be shown on your 2016 tax return, or 100% of the tax shown on your 2015 tax return (but see Special rules for farmers, fishermen, and higher income taxpayers , later). Your 2015 tax return must cover all 12 months. |
Bank statements - should I retain hardcopies for tax or other official purposes (or keep digital scanned copies)? | I am in the United States. There is no need to keep the statements in any form forever. Once the bank gives you a 1099 stating how much interest you have earned, you don't need to keep them. If you only have them in electronic form, that is good enough for the IRS. When you do need to show a bank statement, such as when applying for a loan, the loan company will be keeping a copy. It doesn't matter if it was a scan from the original, from a printed PDF, or if you printed it from your archives. In the US they used send the original check back to the person who wrote it, so they could keep it for their records. Then many banks went to carbons, but if you paid extra they would send you the original. Now the bank that cashes the check scans the check and destroys the original. If you want a copy for your records it only exists as a scanned image. |
Multiple SEO companies claiming I have a past-due invoice | Reading stuff like this makes me want to go into the debt collection business. Just send letters to random people demanding money. Sounds like an easy way to make a living. What's your name and address? Just kidding. If they are sending stuff to a Virginia PO Box, close the box with no forwarding address and consider it case closed. If they are targetting you personally in New Hampshire, the best thing to do is to sue proactively before it goes to collection. New Hampshire has strict anti-debt-collection laws. Basically, what you do is go to small claims court and fill out a one-page form. Sue them for $2000, $3000 or whatever is convenient. Do not hire a lawyer. You can do this in 2 hours of your own time. Your grounds are: (1) Violation of the creditor of NH FDCA laws. According to the laws the creditor has to put all kinds of specific stuff in their threat letters. Since they are not doing this, they have violated NH FDCA. Read the FDCA so you know which specific items they are violating. (2) Extortion. Since you do not owe them any money, demanding money from you is extortion which is both criminally and civilly actionable. You sue them for mental anguish due to extortion. The validity of your claims is irrelevant. You just need to get them in court. There are two possibilities: (A) They fail to show up. In this case you win and they owe you $3000 or whatever. Not only that if they later try to collect from you send a copy of the judgement to the credit bureau or collector or whatever and that is proof you owe them no money. (B) They hire some stooge local lawyer who appears. Accept the court's offer for arbitration. When you go into arbitration with the lawyer tell him you will drop the lawsuit if they send you a check for $500 and a hand-written guarantee from him that you will never hear from his client again. Either way, you come out ahead. By the way, it is absolutely guaranteed that the enemy lawyer will accept your offer in (B) above because the SEO company is already paying him $5000 to show up to answer your lawsuit, and the lawyer does not want to hang around all morning in court waiting for the case to be heard. If he can get out of there in half an hour for only $500 he will do it. -------------------------------UPDATE If all you are getting is calls and the caller refuses to identify themself, then it is definitely an illegal scam. It is illegal in New Hampshire to make collection calls and refuse to full identify who is calling. The phone company has methods for dealing with illegal calls. First you have to file a police report. Then you call Verizon Security at 1-800-518-5507 (or whatever your phone company is). They will trace the call and identify the caller. They you can make a criminal complaint in their jurisdiction unless the call is from Pakistan or something. |
Advice on what to do with my equity? | How will 45K-60K "end up in your pocket"? Are you selling your home? Where are you going to live? You talk about moving to Arizona, what is so magical about that place? Congratulations on making a wise purchase. Some people with new found money use it to correct past mistakes. However, if they do not change their behavior they end up in the same situation just less them money they once had. While 50K income is respectable at your age, it is below the national average for households. One factor in having a college education is those with them tend to experience shorter and fewer periods of unemployment especially for males. Nothing will ever replace hustle, however. I'd ask you to have a plan to raise your income. Can you double it in 5 years? You need to get rid of the revolving debt. Do that out of current income. No need to touch the house proceeds for something so small. Shoot for 9 months. Then you need to get rid of the speeding fines and the vehicle loan. That is a lot of vehicle for your income. Again, I would do that out of current income or by selling the vehicle and moving to something more inline with your income. As far as to moving or flipping foreclosures that is more of a question that has to do with your hopes and dreams. Do you want to move your children every 3 years? What if you move to Arizona and it turns out to be quite horrible? You and your wife need to sit down and discuss what is best for your family. |
Child is on the way, invest for college and car fund options - opinions | Look at your options with a 529 program. If the money is used for education expenses: that currently includes tuition, room & board (even if living off campus), books, transportation; it grows tax free. Earnings are not subject to federal tax and generally not subject to state tax when used for the qualified education expenses of the designated beneficiary, such as tuition, fees, books, as well as room and board. Contributions to a 529 plan, however, are not deductible. If it is a 529 associated with your state you can also save on state taxes. You can make contributions on a regular basis, or ad hoc. Accounts can even be setup by other relatives. I have used a 529 to fund two kids education. It takes care of most of your education expenses. 529 programs are available from most states, and even some of the big mutual fund companies. Many have the option of shifting the risk level of the investments to be more conservative as the kids hit high school. Some states have an option to have you pay a large sum when the child is small to buy semesters of college. The deal is worth considering if you know they will be going to a state school, the deal is less good if they will go out of state or to a private college. The IRS does limit the maximum amount that you can contribute in a year an amount that exceeds the 14,000 annual gift limit: If in 2014, you contributed more than $14,000 to a Qualified Tuition Plan (QTP) on behalf of any one person, you may elect to treat up to $70,000 of the contribution for that person as if you had made it ratably over a 5-year period. The election allows you to apply the annual exclusion to a portion of the contribution in each of the 5 years, beginning in 2014. You can make this election for as many separate people as you made QTP contributions One option at the end is to take any extra money at graduation and give it to the child so that it can be used for graduate school, or if the taxes and penalties are paid it can be used for that first car. It can even be rolled over to another relative. |
Is it ok to just report to 1 credit bureau instead of all 3 | The reason you would want to report to all three is because lenders don't usually query all three. Thus, it may be that your negative mark will be missed by a future lender because that lender didn't query the agency you chose to report to. Generally, it is cheaper to report to more agencies than to query more agencies, and since those reporting are also those querying, it is in their best interest to continue reporting to all agencies, and expecting others to do the same. Each agency calculates the score independently based on the information reported to that agency. Thus only reporting a negative item to Experian will mean that TransUnion and Equifax scores for the same person will be higher. |
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Personal Finance QA Dataset
Overview
Welcome to the Personal Finance QA Dataset! This collection consists of question-answer pairs curated to address various aspects of personal finance. Whether you're diving into budgeting, exploring investment strategies, or navigating credit decisions, this dataset provides a valuable resource for understanding key concepts in personal finance.
Features
- Input: Questions related to personal finance.
- Output: Corresponding detailed answers offering insights and guidance.
Motivation
The aim of this dataset is to empower users with a comprehensive resource for personal finance education. By providing a diverse set of questions and informative answers, we hope to facilitate learning and understanding in the realm of personal finance.
Original Dataset
This collection is derived from a fingpt and has been meticulously processed to ensure relevance and coherence. The original dataset used for compilation can be found (https://huggingface.co/datasets/FinGPT/fingpt-fiqa_qa).
Usage
Explore and utilize this dataset for tasks such as:
- Training and evaluating question-answering models.
- Analyzing common themes and concerns in personal finance.
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