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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Do You Wiki?
MediaWiki, the tool behind Wikipedia, the world's largest wiki, recently won Intranet Journal's Product of the Year Award for the Best Wiki Software.
A lot of this is over my head, waaay over my head. I use a small wiki to communicate with a client, and didn't even figure out that it IS a wiki until I read this! These enterprise-level things confuse me.
If it messes with your head, too, the MediaWiki site has several great tutorials, among them one that defines "wiki". If you don't know, or aren't sure, check it out. As someone who works virtually, I can see how this could be a ~great~ tool for collaboration with clients. I will definitely have to make some time to learn more about it.
The ruling is not new, it became official last November, but it may have been missed by smaller companies who don't keep a close eye on such things. The text of the IRS ruling can be found here. A brief overview can be found at accountingweb.com, but if your company is one affected by the ruling, make sure you read the original from the IRS.
***
I'm trying to boil this down, but it had a lot of tax-numbers-HUH? speak and I had to read it a couple times to make sure I understood what they were saying.
Basically, if a company pays its employees MORE per diem than the Federal standard, they better be able to provide documentation of how they arrived at the figure they use and make sure they keep track of it. Additionally, employees who receive these larger per diems are going to have to document their actual expenses and, if they spend less than their per diem, either return the difference or pay income tax on it.
The IRS, in November, gave companies until 1/1/07 to become compliant with the new ruling, and will only pursue cases of obvious abuse retroactively.
*** Truthfully, though it may pinch a bit for a lot of people, I understand the ruling. I used to see a LOT of per diem employees when I was in hotels, and many of them were obsessive about finding ways to save money while they were traveling (packing coolers, eating fast food rather than at the in-house restaurant, sharing cabs, etc.) so they could pocket the difference on their per diems. I am not saying all, or even most, employees who travel on per diem are like that, but I have personally seen many who were.
Someone recently sent me an interesting article on business liability insurance. I read through it, then decided to (a) do more research on the topic, and (b) share my thoughts on the process with you.
The first one, from accoutingweb.com, is a valid article, but it reads a little too much like an ad or a press release for a specific insurance company, so I decided to dig a little deeper.
I found a little informaton on the Insurance Information Institute's website. However, they have the word "Insurance" in their name, which leaves me inclined to take it with a grain of salt. After all, if we listened to the insurance industry there is no aspect of life or business that is safe, but, by golly, they have a policy that can help you with that! So I kept digging.
Then I started to wonder. It was just research for a blog entry, how much time do I want to give it, you know?
Several search engines and the top five pages of each, with queries worded to professional liability insurance, "Do I need professional liability insurance?", "What is professional liability insurance?" and the main thing I came up with on all of them were lists of links to insurance brokers or articles for medical personnel or social workers or lawyers recommending a place to find it.
I did find an article, three pages into a yahoo search, that I think may be pretty good. It seems like a pretty impartial article on a site for people starting a business--it's in Florida, but should be pretty universal. Ultimately, with any insurance decision, you have to weigh the odds vs. the consequences.
As an example, there was a restaurant in Pflugerville, a small family-owned place that only opened for lunch. They were ~always~ packed, standing room only for years. The restaurant burned down a year and a half ago. Within days of the fire the owner was doing fundraiser meals to raise money to rebuild. Why? The owner had made the choice not to have fire insurance, seeing it as too expensive.
It may be silly of me, but when I heard that I lost sympathy and respect for the place. They have since raised enough money to lease a temporary location to operate from until they rebuild their old one, but I won't eat there. I'm still determining my insurance needs, but I ~do~ know if I ran a business that had, you know, fire, heat, a KITCHEN, I would make sure I had FIRE insurance. But that's just me.
Do a little research and decide for yourself. Talk to your insurance agent, but remember that they work for the insurance company, not you. If possible, look for an independent broker who carries/sells several different companies' insurance to get a broader picture and, hopefully, a bit less biased perspective.
(Can you tell I have issues with the insurance industry? lol)
...is apparently giving the country fits. The IRS found enough errors in early returns filed in January that they've put out an updated Q&A for taxpayers AND businesses.
Have you filed your taxes yet? If you still have questions about this sticky little one-time tax credit, check out the link above and/or contact a tax professional.
Bruce Byfield has a great blog entry on the Linux Journal website about some of the more obscure, less-known features of Writer, and they are powerful features.
I was formatting an ebook this time last year using Writer, and boy, do I wish I knew this then, it would have saved me a lot of time and effort.
Inc. com did a great article last year on the benefits, both to employers and employees, of working virtually/teleworking. Nothing in it was news to virtual assistants, but if you want to check it out, you can find it here.
The flip side, of course, is this nifty study about the Federal government's reluctance to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern workplace.
If you are a virtual assistant, or have ever used one, you know the tremendous advantages, and decreased overhead, of having people who work for you from home. The government managers, apparently, simply do not get it. It's ~almost~ enough to make a person wonder if this sort of thinking is why they aren't in the private sector...
I thought everyone deserved some kind of good news on Valentine's Day, so here goes.
The deadline for filing and paying Federal income taxes has been extended two days this year to Tuesday, April 17, 2007 due to the 15th being a Sunday and the 16th being Emancipation Day, a Federal holiday in the District of Columbia.
Do you hate the sales portion of your business? Be honest. You either love it or you hate it, with sales there isn't really much middle ground (with the possible exception of inside sales).
Why do so many of us hate sales?
Probably because our definition of sales is faulty. Allan Boress, author of multiple marketing books, among them, "The I-Hate-Selling Book", has a great article on accoutingweb talking about what selling is--and what it isn't.
Several tax deductions that expired in 2005 were renewed by Congress late last year.
AFTER the IRS sent the 2006 form 1040s to press. Which means all these forms are incorrect and missing areas to claim these deductions. For more info on just what is missing and how to work around it (this is mostly a personal taxes issue, from what I can see), check out this article from accountingweb.com.
What I am most curious about is how this will affect do-it-yourselfers like me, who use tax software and e-file and never see those lovely, erroneous 1040s. For the state sales tax deduction, a big one for us since we're in Texas, one of the few remaining states that uses a state sales tax rather than a state income tax to raise funds, the IRS has put out Publication 600 to help figure it all out.
For an excellent layperson-friendly description of how to handle the other tax deductions that were reinstated, check out this page at About.com.
Need an accounting software and not sure what to choose? On a shoestring budget and looking at the new Microsoft option because they are luring you in with its absent cost?
Before you make a final decision, check out Intuit's "Quickbooks Simple Start" a very, very basic business accounting software the manufacturer is providing for, you guessed it, FREE.
Just don't believe the part about the 15-minute setup. If I promote that Candy will hunt me down and hurt me :-D
The next generation of cell phones is making waves. Only we can't call them that anymore. In order to accurately describe these devices we'd have to call them multimedia devices.
Newer phone models still make calls, sure, but among the new features available are email (okay, so this isn't new), music playback (not so new either, but only really big for the past year or so), video (think iPod or YouTube-style video), and, for the phone user who wants it all, live TV.
I'm not a tech gal when it comes to my phone--I want it to send and receive and phone calls with clear reception and good coverage areas, and I want to customize my ringtone. That's it.
Sure, I use the camera in it when I'm in a pinch (forgot the camera on a field trip), but you know what cell pics look like, right? It's not going to replace my digital camera any time soon! I truly don't get the video/TV thing, it's boggled me since the first video iPods came out. Everyone is touting how newer phones are getting smaller and smaller - who wants to watch a video on THAT? I'm already nearsighted enough, thanks!
For a more tech-savvy (and probably less biased) look at the future of the cell phone, check out these articles at the Washington Post or PC World (both online).
It is if you happen to have invested in one of the many companies in, or expanding into, the mobile security market (security products for mobile devices).
Why?
Phones are getting smarter and smarter, with devices like the Treo and the Blackberry becoming more widely used. As more and more people take advantage of the wireless data capabilities of these devices, the security risks increase. In 2006 mobile phone/device sales outstripped computer sales by 5 to 1, making them a prime target for hackers and viruses.
A recent report by Juniper Research estimates the mobile phone security market will be a nearly $5 billion industry by 2011.
Looks like its time to stop downloading ringtones for me ;-)
Keep in mind the source is a utility activism firm/site and is more than a little anti-tax and anti-utility. Having said that, the Utility Audit Company (UAC) has some pretty valid points about how the IRS is allowing businesses to compute their excise tax refund for 2006.
The gist of it is that the IRS method is unfair since it only represents one months of the 41 months covered by the refund and business phone use often varies wildly from month to month, considerably more so than personal phone use. The only way to get a truly accurate refund is to time and manpower to researching past phone records to compute the actual refund amount owed to the business.
Now, I'm not a tax person, but even to me this method seems to favor the government, particularly for smaller businesses. What happens to that unclaimed refund money rightfully belonging to American businesses? Uncle Sam gets to keep it. Am I the only one who thinks the agency that most benefits from businesses not getting accurate refunds should NOT be the one allowed to decide how that refund should be calculated?
