Considering Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation: What Business Owners Should Know
Businesses often fail to take full advantage of tax savings opportunities that are available to them. This article provides a high level overview of one such tax savings opportunity, namely, non-qualified deferred compensation plans. What is Deferred Compensation? Deferred compensation generally includes payments earned in a year prior to the year in which the payment [...]
How to Evaluate Financial Advisers
We all want to hire the best financial advisers. The hardest part about hiring a financial adviser is determining how the adviser compares to other financial advisers. There are a number of ways to compare financial advisers. Financial Adviser Compensation Perhaps the most telling way to assess a financial adviser is to determine how he [...]
The Career: Our Greatest Asset
For most of us, our careers will produce more income over time than any combination of investment assets that we will hold. By recognizing that our career is in fact an investment asset, we can start to plan for how to secure, diversify and figure out how to grow this investment asset. Understanding You Career [...]
Financial Goals: Finding Certainty in Uncertainty
Life has its own way of rearranging personal financial goals. What was important yesterday may be less important today, and even less important tomorrow. Therein lies the conundrum. How do we identify and set financial goals that will be just as important in the future, when the future is so uncertain? The answer can be [...]
Employment Taxes & LLCs: A Look at Payroll Taxes
The Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a flexible legal entity that allows taxpayers to elect how they want to account for their state and federal tax liabilities. Unfortunately many taxpayers do not understand issues surrounding whether they should use the LLC and in what form to achieve their tax and asset protection goals. This article [...]
Which Business Retirement Plan is Right for You?
If you run a small business, you’ve got no shortage of concerns: cash flow, marketing, the ebb and flow of the economy – you name it. In fact, you have so many issues to ponder, you might find it hard to take the time to choose a retirement plan for your business. And yet, it’s [...]
Top Ten Tax Attorney Characteristics
Finding a good tax attorney who is competent to handle IRS tax matters can be challenging. There are a number attorneys who claim to provide tax services, yet they have no tax experience or education. The following is a top ten list of desirable tax attorney characteristics that will help taxpayers narrow down their list [...]
Lending Money to Family Members or Friends
There are a number of good reasons to loan money to family members and friends. Sometimes it is to help finance the purchase of a first car or home or to help cover periods of unemployment or retirement situations. Regardless of the reason for making the loan, there are some basic steps that must be [...]
Small Business Owners Benefit from Defined Benefit Plans
There are a number of retirement plan options available to small business owners. Yet for older higher income business owners, the best option might be the least used option – defined benefit pension plans. Defined benefit plans are often referred to as pension plans, because they provide a guaranteed retirement benefit and they must be [...]