Ideas & Insight

If you own your own company and travel for business, you may wonder whether you can deduct the costs of having your spouse accompany you on a business trip. The rules for deducting a spouse’s travel costs are very restrictive. First of all, to qualify, your spouse must be your employee. This means you can’t […]

Do you want to withdraw cash from your closely held corporation at a minimum tax cost? The simplest way is to distribute cash as dividends. However, dividends distribution isn’t tax-efficient since it’s taxable to you to the extent of your corporation’s “earnings and profits.” It’s also not deductible by the corporation. Five alternatives Fortunately, there […]

Common sense dictates that every company, no matter how small, should carry various forms of business insurance. But that doesn’t mean you should pay unnecessarily high premiums just to retain the coverage you need. Here are five ways to better control your insurance costs without sacrificing the quality of your policies: 1. Review coverage periodically. Make […]

If you’re getting ready to file your 2021 tax return, and your tax bill is more than you’d like, there might still be a way to lower it. If you’re eligible, you can make deductible contributions to a traditional IRA right up until the April 18, 2022, filing date and benefit from the tax savings […]

If you made large gifts to your children, grandchildren or other heirs last year, it’s important to determine whether you’re required to file a 2021 gift tax return. And in some cases, even if it’s not required to file one, it may be beneficial to do so anyway. Who must file? The annual gift tax […]

Married couples, you may wonder whether you should file joint or separate tax returns. The answer depends on your individual tax situation. In general, it depends on which filing status results in the lowest tax. But keep in mind that, if you and your spouse file a joint return, each of you is “jointly and […]

Under just about any circumstances, the word “leakage” has negative connotations. And so it follows that this indeed holds true for retirement planning as well. In this context, leakage refers to early, pre-retirement withdrawals from an account. Now, as a business owner who sponsors a qualified retirement plan, you might say, “Well, that’s my participants’ […]

By now, most business owners view technology upgrades as inevitable. Whether hardware or software, the tech your company relies on to operate will need to change slightly or even drastically for you to stay competitive. Strange as it may sound, technology upgrades demand a bit of soul searching. That is, before spending the money, you […]

Economic changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other factors, drove historic global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in 2021. Experts expect 2022 to be another busy year for turnaround acquisitions. In many cases, M&A opportunities arise when a business adversely affected by economic circumstances decides that getting acquired by another company is the […]

If you’re in business for yourself as a sole proprietor, or you’re planning to start a business, you need to know about the tax aspects of your venture. Here are eight important issues to consider: 1. You report income and expenses on Schedule C of Form 1040. The net income is taxable to you regardless of […]