by Leif Jensen | Oct 27, 2015 | General |
I have been dealing with clients who have a child in college and another chasing a certificate program. They have been talking to others and believe that everything will be tax deductible and are wondering what kind of refund they can look forward to. I have been...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 26, 2015 | General |
According to an AICPA study, students are overconfident about their ability to manage money. The majority of those in the study thought their management skills to be good or excellent. But less than 2 out of 5 follow a budget, nearly half had less than $100 bucks in...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 21, 2015 | General |
How old were you when you purchased your first home? We bought our first townhome when we were 25. But we married early and wanted to own and not rent. Which made us house poor much sooner than our friends and peers at the time. According to Zillow, the current age...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 20, 2015 | General |
The trend continues, small firms are expected to still provide about half of new jobs in coming months. This is defined by owners of companies, with 50 or fewer workers. Reports show that they will create an uptick in openings. Overall, it expected that approximately...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 19, 2015 | General |
I was reading an article the other week that was showing the investment requirements for a modern office. I must not have a modern office. I do not have all of these items available nor budgeted at the current moment. How does your office fare? Mobile technology 37%...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 14, 2015 | General |
The IRS has a new program that will allow them to get a jump start on businesses that miss payroll tax deposits. Using this new payroll tax initiative, the Service will notify a business by mail when its records show that the firm’s payroll tax deposits have declined....
by Leif Jensen | Oct 13, 2015 | General |
Have you ever thought of going to law school? Well just remember that law school expenses are not deductible, even for foreign-trained attorneys. A U.S. citizen in Germany took courses and got a license to practice law there. Later, he returned to the U.S. and...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 12, 2015 | General |
Apple and Samsung will shortly have more competition from China. China has cheaper smartphones coming, courtesy of manufacturers: Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE. These companies apparently can churn out high-quality models for $300 or less. By comparison, Apple’s latest...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 7, 2015 | General |
Do you have annual employee reviews? Do you ever review your employees? In a new human resources trend, it seems that fewer companies doing annual reviews of employee performance. Already, 6% of Fortune 500 firms have ditched the process, and many more are likely to...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 6, 2015 | General |
New proposed regulations will force small businesses to ramp up their IT spending, whether they want to or not. The biggest costs will come from necessary upgrades to their systems and their hardware in a bid to secure information and keep hackers. This has worked...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 5, 2015 | General |
At a recent seminar I was exposed to a concept that terrified me greatly. There is a tax reform proposal that the GOP is working on for the 2017 fiscal year. The revocation of all S-Corp elections! Never mind that the S Corps continue to be the most prevalent type...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 2, 2015 | General |
I speculated that there would be no Fed rate hike in September, but there will be one in December. So I am now in line with eighty-four percent of economists as surveyed by Bloomberg (woo-hoo). They also expect an initial interest-rate increase in December, according...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 30, 2015 | General |
I am not a fan of “debit cards”. I have one, but seldom carry or use it. First off since I seldom have it I cannot use it. But that is not the reason. If you lose your “debit card” you can lose everything in your account up to and including your overdraft...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 29, 2015 | General |
We hear about the “middle class” all the time. Most of our clients believe themselves to be the “middle class”. Unfortunately I have to tell them that they are not the “middle class”. According to their income they are the wealthy, that scorned group that does not...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 28, 2015 | General |
With the stagnant wages and the difficulties of finding a starter job in your field unless you were in the top 3% of your class worldwide. Are our children looking at lowered expectations than we were as graduates? I know that starter cars less than $20,000 are rare...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 23, 2015 | General |
I was at the IRS office dropping off some paperwork for a client. While I was there, a business owner showed up and tried to hand in an Illinois tax return. He was obviously confused, which made the IRS personnel a bit confused as well. Now as the IRS rep went to...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 22, 2015 | General |
I was just at a seminar where they polled the audience on where they stored their I-9 forms. Just about everyone stated that they are in the employee’s file. They were informed that they were doing it inappropriately and that they should all be in a single file along...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 21, 2015 | General |
A few weeks ago the Pew Research Center did an analysis regarding Millennials and where they are living. In 2008 most people figured that the poor economy was the main cause for Millennials to be living with their parents. Now that the economy has improved somewhat...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 16, 2015 | General |
At the conclusion of a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, where they examined debt through the generations, they found that 8 in 10 Americans are in debt in some fashion. Wow I could have told them that and they could have saved the money. These roughly match the...
by Leif Jensen | Sep 15, 2015 | General |
It seems that the great(?) state of Illinois is home to nearly 8,500 local governmental units. Are you surprised? I didn’t think so. But what is surprising is that 6,026 are empowered to raise taxes, the highest in the nation. Texas is #2 with about 5,150 local...
