Tax Breaks for People with Disabilities Are Often Overlooked

Greetings.  As you know most accountants are very busy this time of year.  I haven't been able to write as much as I'd like, but I ran across the following tax information that I wanted to share.  The authors at http://www.allsup.com/ did a good job of summarizing tax breaks for disabled individuals so there's no point in me rewriting their article.   I have no affiliation with Allsup but I do like their article reprinted below.

4 Self-Employment Tax Savings Ideas for Small Business

There have been a lot of temporary and proposed tax changes targeted toward small business.  Of all these changes and proposals the Self Employment (SE) tax changes are some of the more helpful.  Here's some background and ideas to help you reduce your SE tax.

2 Popular Tax Breaks to pay for College and other Education Planning Ideas

The cost of college can be challenging for most parents and young adults getting ready to start.  Even if one plans ahead chances are you will not save enough to cover all of the expense.  One can not discount the value of a college education.  A recent article in Time magazine estimated that nearly 40 % of the

Federal Student Aid Planning, FAFSA application

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application needs to be submitted shortly after January 1 for students starting or returning to college in the fall.  As with most government programs funds are finite so it's best to apply early before the money runs out.  See http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/  if you are interested in additional information on Federal Student Aid.  The website has a forecasting tool that is useful to determine how much financial aid one will qualify for if you'd like to get an early estimate for planning purposes.


 
Andrew Jordan, CPA
ajordancpa@comcast.net

Mining the Company Data

Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from data.  Data mining is seen as an increasingly important tool by modern business to transform data into business intelligence giving an informational advantage.  It is currently used in a wide range of profiling practices, such as marketing, surveillance, fraud detection, and scientific discovery.  (Source: Wikipedia definition of data mining)

Most business software allows one to extract data very easily by downloading it into Microsoft Excel or other types of files.   The data can be downloaded to included a number of data field combinations within each record. Once the information is in Excel it can be manipulated with

Break-Even Analysis Part 2

Break-even:  As one can see from my previous B/E analysis posting the additional sales needed to "breakeven" on a new hire decision can be challenging.  With new revenue hard to come by, why would a company add staff if sales have to be increased so much to make a profit on the decision?

Break-even Analysis

One way to look at a spending decision in one's business is to determine how much the company sales have to increase in order to pay for the amount one wishes to spend.  For example if you're making a $30,000 hiring decision and your contribution/gross margin is say 50% the company's sales will need to increase $60,000 in order to "break-even" on the decision.  In other words

Welcome!

Welcome to the Personal and Business Financial Forum started by me, Andrew Jordan, CPA.   I'm a financial professional with over 25 years experience working with businesses and individuals as a CPA, Financial Manager and Consultant.

Feel free to post your questions or comments.   My areas of expertise are tax, accounting, general business management and finance for businesses and individuals.  I can also be reached at ajordancpa@comcast.net for additional information.  Look forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards,

Andrew Jordan, CPA, MSF, CGMA