After a one-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, owners of qualified retirement plans and IRAs must adhere to the rules for required minimum distributions (RMDs). The RMD rules are tricky and could result in a substantial tax penalty if you’re not careful. For starters, an RMD is the amount you must withdraw from a qualified […]

Where your business is located, and how you use the commercial space that you have, can mean the difference between thriving and just limping along — or worse. That fact was brought home for many business owners during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lease payments became a big financial strain, and dust was accumulating on the desks […]

If you receive a jury notice in the mail, you may wonder what it means for you. Can you be excused due to family responsibilities? Can you delay serving because of a big project at work? Will the case be criminal, civil, federal or state? Can you get fired for missing work? This article addresses these […]

Rights and Procedures In today’s complex world, every business owner should have a basic understanding of patents. Without this knowledge, you can’t protect your company’s inventions or defend yourself against lawsuits from other firms. U.S. patents date back to the Constitution, where it says Congress can secure “for limited times to … inventors the exclusive […]

Are you planning to take out a home equity loan or access a line of credit to make a significant home improvement? In the past, you could generally deduct the mortgage interest you incurred, within generous tax law limits. But the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) suspended the deduction for so-called “home equity debt” for […]

Roth IRA and 401(k) accounts were created in 1998. Contributions to Roth accounts are taxed on the front end at ordinary tax rates when made. But withdrawals from these accounts are generally tax-free on the back end. If you began saving for your retirement before 1998, even if you subsequently started contributing to a Roth account, you’ve probably accumulated […]

While a bad economy may be one of the biggest reasons companies downsize, there are other reasons including mergers and acquisitions, changes in management, and outsourcing. Problems can arise, however, if laid-off employees believe they are victims of discrimination. Employees who have been with the company for a long time may feel they are victims […]

When a company goes bankrupt, honest owners or directors do everything they can to hold creditors’ losses to a minimum. When it becomes clear the business can’t be saved, they halt trading (in the case of public companies), hire professional advisors to help guide them through bankruptcy proceedings and generally arrange for orderly liquidation. Less […]

If you were adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, you may have taken a tax-favored coronavirus-related distribution (CVD) from a traditional IRA last year. This privilege was allowed under the CARES Act, which was signed into law on March 27, 2020. What steps can you take now to achieve the optimal federal income tax results? CVD […]

In a competitive retail environment, there’s little margin for error. If your business exhausts its inventory of a key product when it’s most in demand, you’ll lose out on sales to competitors. And if you err in the other direction, you could be saddled with extra inventory and storage costs, potentially crushing your bottom line. It […]