Commercial buildings and improvements generally are depreciated over 39 years, which essentially means you can deduct a portion of the cost every year over the depreciation period. (Land isn’t depreciable.) But enhanced tax breaks that allow deductions to be taken more quickly are available for...
What keeps business owners up at night? Many would say sluggish productivity or escalating expenses. An employee coming to work every day usually doesn’t make the list. But a staff member who never takes a day off can cause problems by showing up sick, distracted...
In 2002, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), as part of its move toward international financial reporting convergence, began to transition from the principle of historic cost to fair value reporting. Fair value estimates are now used to report such assets as derivatives, nonpublic entity...
If you invest, whether you’re considered an investor or a trader can have a significant impact on your tax bill. Do you know the difference? Investors Most people who trade stocks are classified as investors for tax purposes. This means any net gains are treated as capital...
Last year a break valued by many charitably inclined retirees was made permanent: the charitable IRA rollover. If you’re age 70½ or older, you can make direct contributions — up to $100,000 annually — from your IRA to qualified charitable organizations without owing any income...
Do you know how much time your salespeople spend actually selling? In many cases, sales reps spend too much time doing reporting, administrative tasks and other nonsales responsibilities assigned to them. If you can streamline your sales staff’s workflow to keep them better focused on...
Like many companies, yours probably stores at least some of its business files, documents and information in “the cloud.” This is the widely used term referring to the seemingly infinite data storage capacity of the Internet. Using the cloud generally means lower IT costs, because you...
This year, the optional standard mileage rate used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business went down. The reason? Compared with last year, the cost of driving is less because gas prices are lower. Two options If you use a vehicle for business,...
