Tax Issues for Small Business

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Tax Issues for Small BusinessTax issues for small business owners can take them away from focusing on their main business objectives. As a result, small business owners risk heavy penalties and professional fees by mixing personal and business records. It makes it difficult for them and the government tax auditors to assess if there are any irregularities.

Combining personal and business accounts is one of the most costly mistakes many new business owners make. Subsequently, this mistake can cost thousands of tax penalties and professional fees.

Business owners may find it easier to deposit checks to a personal bank account. Or perhaps to charge business expenses to a personal credit card. As a result, these actions place them and their businesses at risk. Making mistakes regarding claiming personal vs. business expenses is a  mistake that can cost them thousands of dollars.

Keep a separate bank account and credit card for your business expenses and never mix the two. With separate accounts, there is a record of all expenses, the date, the item purchased, and how much was spent. Not room for confusion and errors to creep in.

A business is required by law to keep adequate and accurate records of all income and business expenses.

Tax Issues for Small Business – Tips

  • Keep personal and business separate.
  • Have two separate bank accounts: a personal account and a business banking account.
  • Keep good records.
  • Seek expert advice. Include a business banker, tax, and legal professionals.
  • Have an expert complete your taxes

If you are organized, keep excellent records. Have a tax adviser complete your business income tax records. As a result, there is a lot less chance that the government tax people are going to start checking. Believe it or not, by being organized, you will also save time in the long run. Subsequently, this means a whole lot less frustration with your taxes. You will also have more time to spend on your business. Which is the main area you want to spend time on?

Looking for missing receipts and miss-filed receipts is really a waste of time. In addition, straightening out transactions regarding whether they should be charged to your business or personal expenses is not the best use of time. Therefore keep your tax issues for small businesses to a minimum and focus your time on running your business.

Easy Ways to Cut Spending in Retirement

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Easy Ways to Cut Spending in RetirementMany consumers feel that they should just continue living life in retirement. Live the same way they did when they were working. They do not consider that they may have to cut spending in retirement. The unfortunate reality is that with less income they are going to have to make some choices. Regarding their lifestyle and how they spend their money. There are some easy ways to cut spending in retirement. Fortunately some expenses will decline naturally.

For example they will no longer need to pay to commute to work every day. As a result there is less wear and tear on the car and there is less operating costs to be concerned about. But this might not be enough and they will need to reduce expenses in other areas. We put together a list of areas to look at that can be considered to reduce your overall spending. They may not all apply to you personally. But even if one area does, then it means there is more money left in your pocket to be used for other priorities.

Easy Ways to Cut Spending in Retirement

  • Track Spending
  • Trim Food Costs
  • Pocket Savings From Sale Items
  • Reduce Your Rent
  • Shop for Best Price for Services
  • Hunt for Travel deals
  • Shave Savings from Spending Categories
  • Ask For Discounts
  • Pay With Cash

Track Spending – once you know where you are spending your money, better decisions can be made regarding where to trim expenses.

Trim Food Costs – buy in bulk, freeze leftovers, look at the expensive items to see if they can be reduced or eliminated

Pocket Savings From Sale Items – when you buy something on sale (which you should always do and never pay full price) pocket the savings and set the savings aside for an emergency

Reduce Your Rent – if possible by negotiating with the landlord, rent out a room, or downsizing

Shop for Best Price for Services – always compare the cost of services and what they are providing, ask for discounts, senior discounts, cash discounts etc.

Hunt for Travel deals – travel off-season, look for sales and take advantage of all-inclusive packages which are often less expensive that paying individually for airfare, hotel and meals.

Shave Savings from Spending Categories – look at each category of spending and ask yourself if you can reduce spending in each area by 10%

Always Ask For Discounts – the worst that will happen is that they say no. Often business people will reduce the cost by 10% or throw in a needed service that you were putting off for free.

Pay With Cash – only when they offer a discount for cash. Many gas stations do this and some stores will also offer discounts when you pay cash. Take advantage of these offers to save even more money.

What is thin content?

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thin contentFor many years, thin content has been frowned upon by the search engines. If there was not much content, they figured that there was little value to the content for the reader and ranked a site accordingly. It appears that these views are changing as represented by this slide on the left. Content must be useful, it must be informative, add value to the reader and be accurate or of high quality. If a page could meet all of these criteria yet still considered to be thin content should it rank highly? We think it should and would like to provide an example.

Thin Content – Example

Let’s assume you want to find out when daylight savings time changes are to occur in North America. You search for |daylight savings 2017″ and are presented with over 13 million results. We picked the first one which gave us the dates, times, etc. on a very small page in terms of text. No need for 500 words, 1000 words, etc. or a lot of images. All you needed to know is what the date was for the next time change and it answered this question. The page met all of the criteria we mentioned and still had what would be considered thin content. Yet was the first result on the search results pages.

This is an extreme example with one possible result and a very specific result. However, the message is that the page of content does not have to have a lot of text. What it needs to do is answer the searchers question. They may not even stay on the page very long, but they got their answer.

Our web pages are between 300 and 500 words each and try to zero in on one topic to deliver or answer a question that our readers may have. Let us know if we are addressing these questions and if there are others we should tackle.

Is your retirement fully funded?

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Is your retirement fully fundedThere are many complicated ways to calculate Is your retirement fully funded or not! It really comes down to what lifestyle do you want to live while you are retired and whether you have enough monthly income to lead the lifestyle that you want. This includes all of the usual expenses such as a home to live in, food, clothing, entertainment, and perhaps some amount of travel.

But most retiree’s eyes glaze over when you begin looking at the various cash flows that you will need in retirement. Let alone the amount of money that you will need to have saved to generate the income you need. They must also take into account any pension income that they might be entitled to. This will include government pensions in addition to drawing from their savings plans. They have to assume inflation rates and investment income rates. As well as many other expenses associated with trying to assess if they have sufficient income.

Is Your Retirement Fully Funded

The cash flow method may be the simplest in the near term for most people. How much income do you have now? What are your expenses and are you saving some money towards reducing debt as well as for retirement? This is a start and a way to get control of what you are spending and what you are actually saving.

How much income will you actually have at retirement? Take a look at the pension income from your company. When you will receive it, what options there are to consider such as early retirement? Next, do the same thing for government pensions and assess how much and when you will receive your pension.

What are your expenses discretionary and required expenses now, and after your retirement? Do you need to downsize? Do you need to reduce spending to get control of spending and match spending to income levels? Once you have this data consumers can quickly tell whether they will have shortfalls or not. They can tell how much they need to save to replace the income they may need in retirement.

Can you project your schedule of income and expenses a few years into the future during retirement? If you can also add inflation and anticipated increase in income to this picture you will then have a more accurate estimate of how well you will fare during retirement.

Strategic Content Plan

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Strategic Content PlanDeveloping a strategic content plan as part of your SEO responsibilities for a customer is actually much more complex than most people think. After all don’t you just have to have a couple of pages that talk about who your company is, the products and services they offer, and how to contact you? The answer is yes you need these things, but as most web masters for small and large companies know, you are just beginning to scratch the surface. In this post, we will list and discuss a few other topics that need to be thought about when a website is launched on behalf of a customer, or even yourself for that matter.

Strategic Content Plan – Areas to Focus On

  • Company Description – one page
  • Company Services and Product descriptions – many pages
  • Contact information – one page
  • Ordering information – one to several pages
  • FAQ-Frequently asked questions – one page to many
  • Customer reviews – one too many with approval?
  • Images of Products – one too many

The above is definitely important and must be included. However, there are other areas that should be thought about that are aimed at helping the search engines decide how to rank you against other similar web sites. These can include:

  • Linking to other websites
  • Links from other websites
  • Linking to customers, suppliers or even competitors
  • Quality of content
  • Length of pages in terms of text
  • Image control and linking
  • Tracking of customers on your site
  • Chat room capability
  • Content pages related to typical search terms
  • Search phrases and links to your site
  • Conversion rate tracking of visitors to paying customers

Some webmasters would suggest that there are well over a hundred variables that should be taken into account when developing a web site. Following the 80:20 rule, we believe that these are the major ones with the addition of one more.

Every page must offer useful content, informative and valuable content to the reader. Above all, you need to try to answer the question the reader is looking for. If you can do that you most likely will rank well and attract the kinds of customers you are looking for on your site.

 

 

Website crashes or becomes unresponsive

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Website crashesIf the website does not respond or the Website crashes, there are lots of reasons that would cause this particular problem. It is not always a problem for the website itself; there are so many connections within the Internet that there could be a problem, and they could be just about anywhere. For example, to reach any website from your computer, there could be as many as 23 connections over routers and modems through the Internet before they reach our hosting site. Anyone of those could be the culprit that is slowing things down. Sometimes, it is just heavy traffic on one of the routers or the server your website is hosted on that is causing the problem.

Once this traffic clears, your response time will be back to normal. Before reacting, wait an hour or so and then retest. If it is still responding slower than usual, it is time to take some action. You will need to do some investigation to figure out where the delay is occurring so you can do anything about it.

Website Crashes – These include

  • Your ISP has lost connection with the Internet
  • A portion of the Internet is down
  • A router on the path to your website is not responding
  • Your connection to the Internet could be lost
  • Your computer, tablet, or phone may need to be rebooted.

These are the main reasons why a website may not respond, in addition to denial-of-service attacks on the host. Give it sixty minutes, and then retry. Just be patient and try clicking the link a little later to see what happens. If it doesn’t work the second time, it is a good idea to reach out to the website owner.

If you are the website owner, any delay can cause you to lose traffic and customers. Always investigate any delays and take the appropriate action immediately if you want to maintain your revenue stream or customer base. Start with your host provider and ask a technician to load your website in his or her browser.

If it loads quickly, chances are that it is not your website, your host, or your server that is causing the problem. It will be somewhere else, not your website provider’s issue. Check your server to determine where the delays are creeping in.

For more details about web hosting, click here.

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Am I on the right track for retirement

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Am I on the right track for retirementMany consumers asked themselves every day whether they have enough money saved for retirement. Am I on the right track for retirement? They are struggling to pay the bills, look after their families, save for emergencies, and save for retirement. They really want to know how much money they need to have to live comfortably during their retirement years. There are many options with respect to retirement. Including living independently, living with friends, and moving in with the kids.

So economists feel that you should have 1.4 times your annual salary set aside by age 35, 3.7 times by age 45 and 7.1 times by age 55. This can be a great deal of money for many people. For example at age 35 if you make 50,000 a year you should have $70,000 saved for retirement. At age 55 you should have $350,000 saved for retirement. But starting at a young age to begin saving and allowing the income to be reinvested these numbers are achievable.

Am I on the right track for retirement

What can you do to verify your retirement programs progress

There are a variety of steps that you can take to assess how you’re doing relative to your retirement plan. For example start off with reviewing your retirement investments and asked for a projection of what these investments will be at various age levels. Secondly find a good retirement planning tool that allows you to input your savings, your anticipated savings and your expenses at retirement age. You should also be able to enter all of your income from pension, government support and your savings into this plan.

Once you’ve completed your initial plan you will get an assessment of whether you have enough money set-aside for retirement and what your retirement will look like. The next step is to make adjustments in real life in terms of working longer, earning more money, saving more money, or reducing your overall expenses to enable you to have the type of retired life that you would like to have.

It is this self-assessment that can make the difference in achieving the quality of life that you would like to have during retirement. Don’t wait get started now with a savings plan and also analyzing your retirement future regardless of what age you are right now. The sooner you do it the better off you’ll be.

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Will Your Retirement Savings Last

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Will Your Retirement Savings LastMany people throw up their arms in frustration, confusion, and worry regarding the question. Will your retirement savings last? They seem to have no idea whether their savings will last through retirement or not. There are so many variables to think about. It’s challenging to know if they will have enough money to live comfortably during their retirement. Like all problems of this complexity, it is important to break them down into smaller pieces. For example first focus on your income. How much income will you have and where will that income come from? Your income will come from several sources.  A pension from your company, an old age pension from your government, and income from any savings you may have.

Next focus on your expenses. What expenses do you have now, what will you have in the future and what expenses are under your control where you can make decisions with regard to how much you spend? Once you have this information you can begin to assess whether you will have enough money to last through retirement.

Will Your Retirement Savings Last

Let’s look at income and expenses in a little more detail.

Income

Make a list of all the potential income sources that you have. This would include government pension, company pension that you may participate in, income from savings, and income from Business or rental income that you may have. With regard to savings, Many financial advisors recommend that you only withdraw a maximum of 4% each year. This will provide a conservative approach to ensuring that your savings will last through your retirement. If your savings increase through appreciation then your 4% withdrawal rate will increase as well. once you do the calculations you can quickly determine whether your total income will be sufficient for your retirement as compared to your current income or whether you still need to be working. If not you may want to increase your savings, or work longer.

Expenses

Add up all of your expenses in much the same way as you did your income. First of all identify the fixed expenses for things like the mortgage, rent, utilities, and communications such as cable TV and telephone. You may also have insurance payments or payments for a variety of things that will last for some period of time. The next set of payments or expenses that you should look at is your discretionary expenses. This would include food, clothing, and entertainment as well as vacation travel.

The last group of expenses or expenses associated with things like weddings, emergencies, repair and maintenance to your home, and any other major expenses that may crop up during retirement years. You may want to budget for those in advance.

Once you understand your income level, and your expenses during retirement you can then analyze both to make adjustments according to the lifestyle that you would like to live. You may have to generate more income to maintain your lifestyle or conversely you may need to reduce your expenses in some areas to live in the manner that you feel comfortable. The decision is up to you.

SEO – Strategic Design Change

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Strategic Design ChangeYou’re adding content, maintaining the basic design, a good balance of images, and crawlable text, yet you are not getting the traffic that you feel should be coming your way. What changes should you make, and how far should you go? Is there a light bulb moment, as shown in the diagram, that changes everything? What about the investment that has already been made in time, design, writing, etc? Do you just throw this out and start over? This is the Strategic Design Change that most, if not all, designers face.

There are so many questions, and most website owners as well as web site managers just do not have the time to deal with these kinds of issues. It is important to have a strategy for your web site – what are the objectives, what customers are you trying to reach, what is the best way to reach them and how much investment do you make in this aspect of your business compared to other possibilities.

Strategic Design Change – Decisions

These are hard decisions to make, and most people will just go on doing the same thing until something happens that forces them to change. Also, the search engines are constantly updating their search engines all of the time to try to deliver a better result to their customers who pay the bills.

We feel that the right strategy is to define the following attributes and then focus on delivering to your customers:

  • Who are your customers
  • What products are you offering them
  • What services are you providing
  • Have you described these well on your web page
  • Do you have high-quality quality well-written content that describes the above
  • Is your site responsive
  • Can your customers find the information they need and are looking for
  • Is there a way for your customers to provide feedback
  • The old principle – Apply the KISS principle – Keep it Simple ….. applies

Every customer will have a different strategy, but the point is that they need to have one before they even begin building a website. They need to have a strategy before they begin making serious changes to an existing website.

They also need to understand the changes that they will make to existing sites and what impact this will have on search results.

For building websites, SEO, and the strategy behind it, click here.

 

Three activities that may put your website at risk

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website at riskMany websites are penalized by poor content management and linking strategies. There are a number of symptoms to look for to determine if you have been penalized by search engines.   Your website is at risk if your site has been penalized in the last year. Your ranking has declined or your traffic has declined then you might be suffering from one of the following three items:

Website at Risk – Poor content

We cannot emphasize the quality of the content of your website enough. If you have low-quality content, content that would be considered spamming, or content that is not useful to the reader then both the readers as well as the search engines will not be ranking your website very well. Write for the reader and try to answer the question that you believe the reader is searching for. Make it useful and informative. Make sure that the Content is unique and don’t use someone else’s content. You should also avoid duplication on your own website even if you wrote it. Some areas that are easily overlooked on websites is the content on the header page as well as the footer page. this could cause you some problems. keep the content new and exciting, refreshing old content, and keep it interesting and useful for the reader.

Website at Risk – Poor on-page optimization

Avoid packing your title and content full of keywords. This typically will get you penalized by search engines including Google. The easiest way to test whether you becoming spammy or not is by looking at the content, tag lines, etc., and ask yourself does this look spammy? Is it natural? Also, avoid linking content since it is frowned upon by search engines. Write for the users and readers of your content and don’t write for the search engines. You will be much better off in the long run.

Low-quality backlinks pointing to your website

Back links are particularly problematic for many website owners. Back links are links from other websites to your website which you have really no control over. However, if you have a lot of backlinks from other websites that are spammy, then it will bring your website down as well. Investigate tools that will help you within identifying back links and contact the webmasters to determine how you can have the back link removed. Alternatively, you can implement a no follow approach telling the search engines that those back links are not valid and should not be included in the analysis.

These three activities, when followed, will significantly improve your website optimization and ranking in search engine indexing. It takes a bit of work. Particularly with large sites so be prepared to put a lot of effort into this. From the get-go focus on quality content.