Posts by Rick Gossett
Is This Really a Business?
Small home-based businesses have been touted as the last great opportunity for tax shelter. Maybe they are, but there are rules requiring that your business actually be a business and not merely a hobby for which you bring in a little cash to help cover costs. Hobby Loss Rules A Hobby Loss is a loss…
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Understanding a Financial Statement: 3 Key Metrics
Your accounting will ultimately produce financial statements for your business. They are there to help you run the business, and effectively represent each decision you’ve made in the past to help you make decisions for the future. The financial statements accomplish this by translating everything into dollars and cents. But there are other benefits to…
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How Your Business Can Survive Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on small businesses across the United States. The federal government has already passed multiple pieces of legislation attempting to help, and businesses have all kinds of new concerns with health, safety, technology, compliance, and more. So what does your business need to do to survive the crisis?…
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6 Steps to Proper Risk Management
Underinsuring your business can be devastating in the event of a loss, yet overinsuring your business can waste money with each payment of a premium. Risk management is the discipline that allows us to plan for an appropriate amount of coverage in each aspect of our business lives. This article outlines 6 steps to help…
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Correcting Prior Year Tax Mistakes
Situation #1: You’re preparing your income tax return for the current year and notice that you forgot to claim a large charitable contribution. Situation #2: You prepared your tax return and filed it on time, then you receive a corrected Schedule K-1 from an LLC in which you are a member. What to do: In…
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Streamlining Your Processes
Every startup has to develop a process for doing business. Whether that means the business owner has sketched a detailed map of each employee’s day-to-day functions or merely drawn out a list of guiding principles that lead the organization through each and every business transaction. There must be a process in place to set out…
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Protecting Your Intellectual Property
Whenever you start a business, it needs to have something about it that is special, some unique quality. Sometimes, that quality is just bringing an existing product or service into a new market. But other times, the unique quality of your business is a new product or service that you’ve invented. When you’ve taken the…
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4 Essential Elements of a Business Plan
A well thought out business plan is critical to the success of any new venture. The business plan not only identifies the goals of your business, but it also will outline the plans to execute those goals. It tells you both where you want to go as well as how you are planning to get…
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What Business Records Should You Keep?
Knowing what business records to keep is critically important to a small business entrepreneur. These records serve many functions. They help you quantify and monitor the progress of your business, and make decisions accordingly. They give you the information you need to prepare a financial statement. They allow you to identify your various receipts and…
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The Independent Contractor Checklist
Whether a worker is an Independent Contractor or must be put on payroll as an employee is a question of facts and circumstances. The primary issue is whether the employer has the right to “direct and control the exact duties and manner in which a worker carries out those duties.” There is no specific law…
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