How to Find a “Soulmate” er… Good Business Partner

If you have read our older blogs, we made a post about how working with your spouse as a business partner can be very effective if you treaded carefully. Now, in case you do not have a spouse, we will talk about how to find a business partner with the right qualities.

If you believe that you as a business person can work better alone, we have an example that may change your mind. Written from lesseverything.com, they had an example of a man named Allan who had been running his own consultant business just fine alone. He had a father who was a successful entrepreneur for decades that told him not get a business partner. Eventually, Allan met Steve during the Summer 2006. Steve could take Allan’s ideas and instantly be able to tell him why it was bad and how to make it better. Allan quickly realized that having Steve around would make him better at what he does. Additionally, he also realized that Steve could also plan and execute business better than Allan could. Allan was ideally the idea factory while Steve improved upon those ideas. Now today, they together have made an even more successful business.

Keep in mind that a business partnership is like a marriage without the sexual part. Every business decision that Allan makes will affect Steve, and every business decision that Steve makes will affect Allan. If Steve needs to spend more for the business, this will put a strain on Allan, which will affect the business entirely. In a way, it is like having your spouse spend tons of money on products that are unnecessary; you would have to keep track of their spending in order to use that budget for other important things.

How do you make a business partnership work out? Well, it’s basically the same thing as a marriage:

Have mutual respect for each other: You must always have respect for the things that both parties do, and they must collaborate and work together without any criticizing or fighting. It is a partnership and marriage, not a war between two partners.

When you have a partnership, you treat each other as if you are equals. There is no such thing as the dominator in the relationship or the captain. When you make decisions, make it together with a compromise if one party does not agree with certain factors. This would be another way to show respect for one another.

Another thing that is considered to be rare, but if you have it, do not lose it. This would be having a partner who has skills that are complementary to your skills. In lesseverything.com’s case, Allan is a designer and Steve is a developer. When you have a person who designs and another who develops those designs while improving them through the process, you can say that it works like “peas and carrots.”

There are times when you and your business partner are best friends, and sometimes you both are not, but one thing for sure us that they are always aware of how the other party is doing, and they are usually willing to help that person out. In many cases, they are trying to understand each other’s stresses and the workload.

Here are two qualities that your partner should have:

–          A real friend, spouse, or partners are willing to point out your flaws and tell you some of things that you are lacking. They are saying this because they want you to grow, they are not looking disrespect you or criticize you. And you are willing to take that in because you value their opinion.

–          They do not judge you. When you need help with a broken car, moving, or if some kind of emergency happens, who would you call? If it is 2:00am and you are unable to drive back home, who is going to drive 50 miles to help you out? If that person is willing to do that for you, consider that person a true friend. This is how your business partner should be.

Inspiring quote: “Allan says…

“I’ve always had plenty of friends, but there’s only a small circle of those that I would call ‘close friends.’ My Grandfather would tell me that before the Great Depression, he had money, a bunch of friends and a Model-T car. When the hard times struck, his family lost everything–including the friends. They only wanted to be around him when he had possessions.”

 

***ARTICLE BASED ON LESSEVERYTHING.COM***

 

Professional New Year’s Resolution Ideas

It’s that time of the year again. We are sure 2016 wasn’t that great, or maybe it wasn’t too bad for you, but the most important thing to remember now is to learn from everything you have experienced in 2016 and cherish those moments when you were most happy. One thing to keep in mind however, is that sometimes New Year’s Resolutions are somewhat not going as planned. According to Amanda Zantal-Wiener 45% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions, however, only 8% are successful in achieving them. Interestingly, University of Scranton’s Journal of Clinical Psychology stated that the top 10 resolutions of 2015 included losing weight and falling in love. Although those goals are great, the question you should ask yourself is, are they really going to make you better at what you do every day?

Again, Amanda Zantal-Wiener has stated some tips on some professional New Years Resolution Ideas incase you are short on what ideas. The challenge here is to see if you can come up and stick to professional New Year Resolutions. These tips will drive you to become more “creative, productive, and generally more content at work.” Here they are:

–          Assign times throughout the day to make an electronics- free zone.

• Our bodies are trained to respond to light and dark signals. According to National Sleep Foundation, these signals send us important signals, like the time of the day. Once you add phones and electronic screens to your day, our brains recognize the brightness from phones, and other electronic devices. Ever wonder why people usually never get enough sleep? Its because many of us have a hard time to fall asleep when we’re exposed to too much screen time at night.

 

• HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THIS? : Everyone can relate to this issue, and it is in fact a very hard resolution to achieve. If you like to watch movies, tv shows, or play video games before going to bed, try to lower the amount you do each night. For example, if you watch tv for about 2 hours before you sleep, reduce that amount to 1 hour and 30 minutes and keep going until you finally can finally sleep without it. Replace the lost time of tv by reading a book, journal. Perhaps read an accounting book, learn how to become a cpa, or better yet, read books on how to save money!

 

–          Write about anything everyday! Perhaps a diary

• According to Amanda Zantal-Wiener, the quality of writing in the U.S has been going around the news and headlines for awhile now. Many viewers and consumers are looking for better writers, however, the trouble is that they are having trouble investing the time to do so. According to Neil Patel, he said writing for 30 minutes a day (of course skipping the weekends) will greatly improve your writing skills. Practice makes perfect!

 

• HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THIS? : Pick a question everyday and write about it. You can get topics by asking friends, a customer, or a topic that has always been floating around your head for awhile. It really helps you bring out your diction levels while increasing your conversation skills. You can even write something that makes no sense, the point is to improve your writing.

 

–          Always ask for help.

• You’re probably wondering, doesn’t that make me feel needy and less important? Not at all! Zantal-Wiener states that Care.com took a survey of working mothers and the findings was about the concept of asking for help. Around 30% of respondents felt guilty of doing things without asking. Also, about 79% also felt like they were falling behind at work, and 75% saw an overall reduction in stress when they did ask for help. Obviously, these numbers goes beyond working mothers, but as Zantal-Wiener states, “there’s an epidemic of fear when it comes to asking for help at work.”  So if you need help with anything, for example, taxes or accounting, you can contact a cpa firm and ask any questions when you have any financial problems!

 

• HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THIS? : This was a very good quote that Zantel-Wiener posted : “The most successful people ask for help when they need it!” Always remember this, this will lead you to success. Don’t ever assume that your questions are dumb, if people say that it is, just get the answer and don’t ask them again, those people are not good people, unless they are joking.

 

–          Read more.

• Remember, the most successful people never stop learning. 70% of adults in the professional or managerial roles continue their education. It is one of the best ways to constantly update yourself with industry trends, learning from experts, and expand the spectrum of creativity. Some of the best ways to learn is to read outside of a classroom setting. Reading accounting blogs, reddit blogs, or some other blogs that are notable really provide useful information that may help you in the future.

 

• HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THIS? : There is a ton of content out there, however, some content that would be worth reading. If you need some useful information on how to save money or cut tax spending, perhaps reading our older blogs at sonnycpa.com would be helpful. There are many others you can Google, there is so much content out there. If you have any questions about something, simply ask it, or check out our older blog posts.

 

Well that’s all the tips we have for you, we hope you guys have a Happy New Year! Look forward to 2017 and enjoy what we have now! 

A Smart Business Decision Maker = A Successful Entrepreneur

Many successful business leaders all share a common skill that most people do not posses. Although this skill comes in all forms and is dependent on the amount of opportunities given to them, they all still have to undergo a process whether it takes a long time to process or a very short amount of time. That skill, my fellow entrepreneurs is: Smart Business Decision-making. Every day people from all over the world make decisions. You may not realize it but you, the reader, just made the decision to read this article (Thanks by the way!). However, let’s take it to a business perspective; business leaders, (including yourself) “make dozen of decisions a day” that creates an impact to the success of their company while creating an influence factor to employees as well. “Developing such a skill requires a combination of education, experience, and intuition.”

Marci Martin, author of Business News Daily who wrote the article “How to Make Effective Business Decisions” has stated a great quote: “There are many things that influence how an individual makes decisions. They include emotions, perceived personal and professional risks and rewards, preparation through experience or education, deadlines, stress and a host of others. It is important to mitigate the irrational and embrace the rational.”

Many decisions always comes with a process, as mentioned above, there are many factors that come into play before coming up with a conclusion. Some of those decisions usually come from a “gut feeling” while others come from undergoing a long process of asking others, and a more common form would be the opportunity cost (Is it more beneficial to me than the cost?). As Martin mentioned, the “bottom line is that being an effective decision-maker requires practice.”

Gayle Abott, President of Strategic Alignment Partners, a human consulting firm, has implemented a four- point strategy to deploy whenever you must act:

–          Identify the problem.

–          Analyze the possible solutions

–          Evaluate the possibilities that are likely to bring you closer to your goal.

–          Make the decision.

However, as easy as this 4 point system sounds, this type of strategy does not come easily for any beginner. As Abott has said in Business News Daily, it takes years of practice to master this skill. Many people who have become masters did not simply start off as talented decision makers, they made many mistakes in the past, learned from them, and simply moved on. The most crucial part in any decision making in a business, is the ability to learn from them. It is not easy as you think it is because people still make the same mistake, whether it’d be motivated by an emotion, by influence, or by stubbornness. The reality is that, it will not be easy to become a smart business decision maker until you have made enough decisions to consider yourself a smart business decision maker. 

Rental real estate offers tremendous tax advantages

Rental real estate offers tremendous tax advantages and opportunity for tax planning. Taxpayers, such as you, can depreciate property far exceeding your actual investment, deduct interest on borrowed capital, exchange rather than sell properties to defer tax on gains, use installment sales to defer tax on sales, and profit from preferential rates on long-term capital gains. Most importantly, you can generate “positive cash flow,” or monthly income, with depreciation deductions that effectively turn the actual income into tax losses.

However, deductions are not unlimited. For example, real estate income and loss is generally considered passive income and loss for tax purposes. Taxpayers generally cannot use passive activity losses (PALs) to offset ordinary income from employment, self-employment, interest and dividends, or pensions and annuities. The rental real estate loss allowance and real estate professional status are two important exceptions to this rule. In addition, the tax consequences of renting out a vacation home depend upon the amount of time the home is rented and the amount of time you use the home for personal purposes.

The second exception allows real estate professionals not to treat their rental activity as a passive activity. Therefore, their losses are not limited to passive income. This exception requires material participation by the taxpayer which is demonstrated by meeting one of seven tests. These tests are complex and include the number of hours of participation and the facts and circumstances of the participation in the activity.

Vacation homes are taxed under one of three sets of rules depending on how long the homeowner rents the property. If you rent your vacation home for fewer than 15 days during the year, no rental income is includible in gross income. If you rent the property for 15 or more days during the tax year and it is used by you for the greater of (a) more than 14 days or (b) more than 10% of the number of days during the year for which the home is rented, the rental deductions are limited. Under this limitation, the amount of the rental activity deductions may not exceed the amount by which the gross income derived from such activity exceeds the deductions otherwise allowable for the property, such as interest and taxes.

If you have any questions as to how the rental real estate rules apply to your particular situation, please do not hesitate to call for an appointment. We can assist you in taking advantage of the available tax benefits and develop an overall tax plan.

2012 Resolves Many Uncertainties

2012 Resolves Many Uncertainties, Creates Others; Sets Stage For Future Tax Reform.

Uncertainty during 2012 over what tax laws would govern in 2013 and beyond because of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts clearly was the most significant development of the year. Now that Congress and President Obama — through the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) — have provided a degree of certainty over tax rates into at least the immediate future, taxpayers need to adjust their tax plans accordingly. Individuals and businesses should immediately recalibrate strategies in light of ATRA. 2012 was also a significant year for important tax developments from the Treasury Department, the IRS and the courts. These developments demand the attention of individual and business taxpayers not only to caution what is no longer allowed under the tax laws but also to shape what steps can be taken in 2013 and beyond to maximize tax savings. With that forward-looking perspective, this Tax Briefing reviews key federal tax developments that took place during 2012.

 

Business deduction for the entire cost of qualified property

Businesses should consider accelerating purchases into 2012 to take advantage of the still generous Code Sec. 179 expensing. Qualified property must be tangible personal property that a taxpayer actively uses in its business, and for which a depreciation deduction would be allowed. Qualified property must be newly-purchased new or used property, rather than property the taxpayer previously owned but recently converted to business use. Examples of types of property that would qualify for Code Sec. 179 expensing are office equipment or equipment used in the manufacturing process. Additionally, Code Sec. 179 expensing is allowed for off-the-shelf computer software placed in service in tax years beginning before 2013.

If a taxpayer’s equipment purchases for the year exceed the expensing dollar limit, the taxpayer can decide to split its expensing election among the new assets any way it chooses. If the taxpayer has a choice, it may be more valuable to expense assets with the longest depreciation periods. As long as the taxpayer starts using its newly-purchased business equipment before the end of the tax year, it may take the entire expensing deduction for that year. The amount that can be expensed depends upon the date the qualified property is placed in service, not when the qualified property is purchased or paid for.