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Thursday, November 30, 2006
Simplification is a Good Thing
The primary tax form used by millions of Americans, the 1040, will be getting a new look, according to a recent USA Today article. The form undergoes minor changes every tax year, but has not seen a major revision in almost 30 years.
The new 1040 is supposed to be shorter than the current 77-line version with less used lines and worksheets moved to the new Schedule O. The IRS hopes to have the new form in use by 2009, but indicated there may be a possible delay due to budget issues within the agency.
Truly, though, the IRS wants the American people not to know about the 1040 change - they are encouraging online tax filing, a method that does not require paper forms and in which most people never see the actual tax form filed on their behalf (via tax software or tax preparers).
You guys already know I'm always looking for strange/interesting news about business so I run into some really odd stories sometimes. I thought I would share this one:
So, basically for a small amount of time (imagine that! - this new "policy" didn't last long) you had to leave your driver's license with the "bouncer" at the door of IHOP. *laugh* Just for some waffles? Come on, people...
I know that people do eat and leave without paying, but is it really that rampant that the diner would want to anger the rest of the customers? I know I would have left and went right down the road to the Dennys.
Price Waterhouse Coopers recently completed their 3rd quarter study of U.S. online advertising revenue for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The latest report indicates that Internet advertising revenue has gone up for the 8th consecutive quarter.
Wow - talk about a growth industry!
Online advertising revenue increased 2% from the 2nd to the 3rd quarter in 2006. Not a big number, until you realize that the total revenue increase for the past year is 33% - from $3.1 billion to $4.2 billion in a single year.
Despite all this increased revenue, Internet advertising still only represents about 5% of U.S. advertising revenue.
Yeah yeah, business blog, nothing fun, darn it! :-)
Seriously... everytime I drive-thru Bank of America I'm going to hear this in my head...
You almost have to give the guy some props... I mean, I know I would not have got up there done that... of course, I'm just as tone deaf as he is, so... Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US!
The IRS, beginning January 1, 2007, is increasing the fees it assesses to taxpayers who ask for payment or installment plans, some of them more than doubling. This is the first increase in installment plan fees since the IRS began charging a fee for installment plans in 1995.
After quite a bit of digging I was unable to locate information on the fee change or new fees anywhere on the IRS website, so you'll just have to check it out the same place I did - this article at accountingweb.com.
Edit - 11/26/06
While looking for something else on the IRS website I ran across the official press release on this topic - check it out here.
You have four seconds to sell me on your product - go!
This is the message a recent survey is sending to etailers everywhere. The survey gathered information from 1, 058 online shoppers and one of the things they all agreed on, newbie and veteran online shopper alike, is that loading time is crucial to their decision making process. When they decide which website to spend with, if you want it to be you, your page had better load in four seconds.
I, personally, am willing to wait the 8 seconds that WAS the cut-off a few years, provided that the ADS do not load faster than the content or the images. I am a bit outside the norm with this view, but what's new?
Online shoppers want fast loading times, easy to understand and navigate sites, especially in the registration and checkout areas, and if they don't get them they are highly unlikely to give you a second chance.
With the vital-to-retail holiday shopping season about to start, maybe it's time to get out a stop watch and go to a public terminal, somewhere your site is not already cached, and clock your speed. Good luck!
For the whole scoop, register with Akamai, the company who commissioned the survey, and they'll send you a copy of the results. Check out the abbreviated results in an internetnews.com article here.
Yea, you saw how excited Candy was over the check printer, right?
I can just picture her clamoring for something like this in the near future.
As someone who has less than convenient access to my bank I can totally see the appeal of the digital deposit. It is not, apparently, a new concept, just one that has only been available to bank customers who process HUGE amounts of checks as payment, like credit card companies. Since I'm also not the most tech-y person I'd need a lot of reassurance on the security front.
On the other hand, MasterCard has never once lost a check I sent them or entered it wrong, unfortunately (and why is it that bank errors are never in MY favor?)
Oh well. I bet that Candy is, even now, trying to think up a way to integrate this technology into someone's solution.
We are usually pretty fast on adopting things here at OffAssist, which means we always have a new toy we are trying out. Sometimes they are complete duds and other times we hit pay dirt. Today was a pay dirt kind of a day. I do some check printing for clients and it's always irritated me when they change a phone number or mailing address - we have to order new check stock. Then it doesn't always print straight -- oh, there's a million different reasons I spend time glaring at printing checks...
Those days, my friends, are over! I have discovered VersaCheck. I got my VersaCheck 2007 Gold edition today and it is, in a word, AWESOME. It integrates full with QuickBooks and prints checks (that are Check 21 compliant and MICR encoded) to blank check stock. What a beautiful thing! I can change company details on the fly and add logos/graphics/etc.
It also means I can print checks on the fly. I can take checks by phone from clients and my clients' clients and no longer have to deal with "the check is in the mail".
It was a pretty good deal too. I got the printer "free" with an order of $150 worth of stuff. The quality is really good too. I'm actually impressed.
I'm off to find some checks to print so I can play with this some more... how cool!
I finally bit the bullet last week and got my merchant account set up. Most of my clients pay by check, but the trends are quickly changing... Intuit made it pretty easy to apply for the merchant account and all of the approvals came through and everything appears to be working just fine.
Great, so the next thing on my to-do list is to get the online billing solutions working. This is great because it will send a payment link with my invoices via email to clients to pay from. Oooohh... if only it were that easy.
As an accounting professional, I am exempt from the monthly fee for this service. The problem? There's no where to sign up for it. The service is only $15 per month, and well worth it, but in the interest of research, I decided to see how long it would actually take...
It's now 6:17pm. I've called 12 different Intuit telephone numbers, been transferred 28 times (4 of those to India's tech support people which can't help me unless I have a technical issue - honestly, I almost had a technical issue when I considered picking up the computer and throwing it out the door). And... no luck. No one over there seems to have a clue how to set this up for me. It's actually kind of funny. So, "a supervisor is going to call me back"
... I'm holding my breath.
It's actually an interesting thing for me to watch because Intuit offers these items free to both ProAdvisor accounting professionals and Non-ProAdvisor professionals because they want us to tell our clients and refer them to the programs. Of course, signing up my client will be easy, but they make it so difficult that I wonder if they realize the mistake of lost business they are making. Having easy answers for clients should be closer to the top of their minds than it is.
Anyway, I'm sure it will be worked out, but it was a nice exercise in futility.
Microsoft has announced a November 30, 2006 launch date for both the new Windows Vista OS and Office 2007.
This is a business version, only, don't expect the consumer version until it really is 2007--the current estimated launch date for the consumer edition is January 30, 2007.
Think of the difference as being roughly equivalent to the difference between XP Pro and XP Home.
There is a shortage of engineers with the ability to be innovative and it is only getting worse. Even companies looking for their IT staff in emerging nations are having trouble because the demand for capable and original thinkers is high in theirhome nations, too. Many of the companies surveyed also expressed concerns over the decline of the quality of technical education being offered in the US and UK. Tech companies are now having re-assess how they design their business model and devote more time and resources to employee retention.
---I've had to edit this about three times now. My husband is an IT engineer and after years of layoff scares and declining benefits it is simply impossible for me to be even remotely objective on this one. Read the report, form your own opinion, and come back and tell me what you think.
Hilton hotels announced last week that they anticipate a record 2.5 billion dollars in revenue for 2006 from bookings through their proprietary websites. This is up from $709 million in 2000. Bookings made through one of the Hilton sites (including all their individual brands, not merely Hilton) make up 17% of their revenue, while reservations from third-party online travel portals make up a mere 3% a number has not changed in years.
The biggest thing Hilton has done is to increase the amount and type of information directly available to planners and consumers through their sites. One of the effects has been the elimination of the need, for some groups, to go through the sales office at the property. More convenience for customers, right? Sure. And a lot more profit for the hotel--no one tries to negotiate with the computer the way they do with a salesperson. I don't work for Hilton, never have, but I've been in hotel sales and catering and I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that small group revenue has gone up thanks to their e-Vents program.
H&R Block and HSBC-North America are unveiling new plans to better disclose their rates and fees to potential customers for tax preparation and their "refund anticipation" loan program.
lol
I have always felt this was a huge scam. It's similar to most bank's direct deposit advance programs, and, while I cannot speak for H&R, I know my bank charges 10% for these puppies. Yea, pretty outrageous for a 4-day loan, but when you are out of town and broke down on the side of the road who's going to argue it? Yea, me neither.
My personal solution? Make the tax code simple enough that regular people can figure out how to do their own darn taxes!
For more info, check out the full details from the Kansas City Star article here.
A final note...
Consumer groups have alleged that H&R Block markets their services, and particularly their advance loan programs, to low-income families, the group least able to afford the excess fees. H&R says no.
Have you seen any other tax preparers camped out in the Walmart during March & April?
MasterCard, the over-arching brand behind the cards issued by literally thousands of banks went public. I am a financial ignoramus and didn't know that til the 1st when they posted uber profits vs. the third quarter of '05 (pre-IPO).
Visa is apparently green with envy over the green raised by MasterCard's very successful IPO and is in the process of merging several Visa companies (Visa US, Visa Canada, etc.) in preparation for an IPO of their own.
So, if I buy stock in MasterCard using my MasterCard, will that make it the card that pays me back... Or is that Discover? and does anyone know if Discover is publicly traded?
--For the real skinny, check out THIS article at BusinessWeek.com--
I used to work for minimum wage. I remember how excited I and my fellow movie theatre concessionaires were when it went up from $3.35 to $3.80 an hour. We thought we were rolling in it. Of course, we were 16 and didn't have cars yet, so that probably was okay money in 1990 for someone with no expenses to speak of.
Today I went to look up what it went up to $3.80 from (I couldn't remember) and was horrified to see that the $0.45 an hour increase of 1990 was the first one in NINE years.
Before I started my own business I did a lot of job hunting and realized, even highly skilled, that the best I could do in the marketplace was $10-$12/hour. By the time you figure in the gas/lunch/daycare/wardrobe it just wasn't worth it to go to work for someone else.
Did you see that? I said $10-$12/hour WASN'T WORTH IT. Minimum wage is $5.15/hour. I simply cannot imagine supporting a family making that sad excuse for a wage. Maybe, barely, a young, single, 20-something person with a boxcar apartment willing to eat ramen a LOT could live on that, but, really, could anyone else?
I've spent a lot of years being on the unpopular side of this issue--My background is in the foodservice and hospitality industries and there are few things they fight harder against than having to pay the maids, janitors, busboys, dishwashers, and housemen more. Nothing made my bosses madder than to find out I support a dramatic minimum wage increase. While we're at it, health benefits for hospitality workers would be nice, too :-)
For more info on the restaurant and hospitality industry and minimum wage, check out:
Thanks to controversy and anti-trust allegations from (among others) Adobe and Norton, the new Microsoft Vista operating system will be shipping to Europe without the new features that these companies objected to (built-in security features, xdf document format, etc.)
Personally, I am of two minds on this one.
On the one hand, I'm not a Microsoft fan just on principle. Despite years of arguments to the contrary they do their utmost best to stifle all competition and make themselves the only solution. This is just wrong and never good for consumers. In this, I applaud the EU.
On the other hand, I live in Austin, mid-nation geek central and have plenty of access to free/cheap (can you say Taco Bell & a giant Mountain Dew?) computer support if I need it. If I was anywhere else, or not surrounded by a circle of friendly geeks Microsoft's all-inclusive solutions would look pretty good: they're guaranteed to be compatible, there's only one place to call for support, etc.
The EU has required Microsoft not to offer the stripped version of Vista for a higher price to discourage consumers from buying it.
If Microsoft really wants to be as fair as they say they do, they'd strip down the cost of Vista for everyone (not just Europe!) and price the additional features, browser, security, document stuff, and media player separately and equivalent to the competition.
