Four Facts About Bartering Via irs.gov

In today’s economy, small business owners sometimes look to the oldest form of commerce – the exchange of goods and services, or bartering. The IRS wants to remind small business owners that the fair market value of property or services received through barter is taxable income.

Bartering is the trading of one product or service for another. Usually there is no exchange of cash. However, the fair market value of the goods and services exchanged must be reported as income by both parties.

Here are four facts about bartering that the IRS wants small business owners to be aware of:

1. Barter Exchange A barter exchange functions primarily as the organizer of a marketplace where members buy and sell products and services among themselves. Whether this activity operates out of a physical office or is internet based, a barter exchange is generally required to issue Form 1099-B, Proceeds from Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions, annually to their clients or members and to the IRS.
2. Barter Income Barter dollars or trade dollars are identical to real dollars for tax reporting. If you conduct any direct barter – barter for another’s products or services – you will have to report the fair market value of the products or services you received on your tax return.
3. Taxes Income from bartering is taxable in the year it is performed. Bartering may result in liabilities for income tax, self-employment tax, employment tax, or excise tax. Your barter activities may result in ordinary business income, capital gains or capital losses, or you may have a nondeductible personal loss.
4. Reporting The rules for reporting barter transactions may vary depending on which form of bartering takes place. Generally, you report this type of business income on Form 1040, Schedule C Profit or Loss from Business, or other business returns such as Form 1065 for Partnerships, Form 1120 for Corporations, or Form 1120-S for Small Business Corporations.

For more information see the Bartering Tax Center in the Business section at http://www.irs.gov.

List of Social Media Sites & Directories

twitter.com

linkedin.com

facebook.com

youtube.com

slideshare.net

blogger.com

wordpress.com

43things.com

foursquare.com

digg.com

friendfeed.com

friendster.com

plaxo.com

spoke.com

zigg.com

zoominfo.com

Six Important Facts about Dependents and Exemptions via IRS.gov

Six Important Facts about Dependents and Exemptions

Some tax rules affect every person who may have to file a federal income tax return – these rules include dependents and exemptions. Here are six important facts the IRS wants you to know about dependents and exemptions that will help you file your 2010 tax return.

1. Exemptions reduce your taxable income. There are two types of exemptions: personal exemptions and exemptions for dependents. For each exemption you can deduct $3,650 on your 2010 tax return.
2. Your spouse is never considered your dependent. On a joint return, you may claim one exemption for yourself and one for your spouse. If you’re filing a separate return, you may claim the exemption for your spouse only if they had no gross income, are not filing a joint return, and were not the dependent of another taxpayer.
3. Exemptions for dependents. You generally can take an exemption for each of your dependents. A dependent is your qualifying child or qualifying relative. You must list the social security number of any dependent for whom you claim an exemption.
4. If someone else claims you as a dependent, you may still be required to file your own tax return. Whether you must file a return depends on several factors including the amount of your unearned, earned or gross income, your marital status, any special taxes you owe and any advance Earned Income Tax Credit payments you received.
5. If you are a dependent, you may not claim an exemption. If someone else – such as your parent – claims you as a dependent, you may not claim your personal exemption on your own tax return.
6. Some people cannot be claimed as your dependent. Generally, you may not claim a married person as a dependent if they file a joint return with their spouse. Also, to claim someone as a dependent, that person must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. resident alien, U.S. national or resident of Canada or Mexico for some part of the year. There is an exception to this rule for certain adopted children. See IRS Publication 501, Exemptions, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information for additional tests to determine who can be claimed as a dependent.

For more information on exemptions, dependents and whether you or your dependent needs to file a tax return, see IRS Publication 501. The publication is available at http://www.irs.gov/ or can be ordered by calling 800-TAX-FORM (800-829-3676). You can also use the Interactive Tax Assistant at http://www.irs.gov/ to determine who you can claim as a dependent and how much you can deduct for each exemption you claim. The ITA tool is a tax law resource on the IRS website that takes you through a series of questions and provides you with responses to tax law questions.

Publications:
IRS Publication 501, Exemptions, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information

Original posting by IRS Tax Tip 2011-07

QuickBooks- Invoicing Sequence Fix

I came across this issue last week with a client’s QuickBooks file.  I thought I would pass along the solution I found.

My client was using a numeric numbering sequence for its invoicing.  Each time they invoiced a customer the invoice number would increase by one digit.  Example 850 851 852 853 ect.  For one of their invoices they decided to use a alpha numeric reference for the invoice ; Example “Nov 2010″.

Once they made that change in invoice numbering, any future invoices defaulted to the alpha numeric sequence. They then would have to click back to the previous invoice to see what number they last left off on and then manually enter in the new invoice number.  This became quite time consuming and frustrating for my client.  Even after saving an invoice once the correct numbering was used, still resulted in the alpha numeric default showing up upon attempt to generate a new invoice.

After messing around a bit with the transactions I stumbled upon the solution.

 First you need to find out the latest or highest invoice number in your sequence that you wish to continue with.  One way to find out that number is to run a “Missing Check” report.

To get there you can use the menu across the top of your QuickBooks Window

Choose Reports > Banking>Missing Checks

The option window will appear asking you to

Specify which account you wish to filter.

Choose : Accounts Receivable

  Once the Report screen appears:

 you will then click on the “modify  button

Then go to the “filter” tab

and under transaction type choose “invoice”

  

You will then be able to spot your highest / last number used in Invoicing.

The last step is to create a New invoice with the last number on your report.

It doesn’t matter which customer you choose as this invoice will be deleted.

Add an item or service and a dollar amount ( just something that will require being saved)

When you save this invoice you should be prompted with a “duplicate invoice error”

 Click the “keep number” button.

 Lastly go back and delete this new invoice you just created.  (you can find it in the customer center under the customer you used for the invoice or in the invoice screen click the previous button to get to that invoice.

This will reset  your numbering sequence back to where you left off.

Social Media Website links

Here is a listing of great websites to assist you with your social media strategies:

Foursquare.com Twitter.com linkedin.com facebook.com youtube.com

Slideshare.net

Twellow.com Twitter yellow Pages

Twellowhood for Syracuse NY!!

Advanced Twitter Search

Justunfollow.com

Twitter Resources

Twitter for Dummies

Linkedin for Dummies

Create a facebook fanpage

Tools for Managing Social Media:

Hootsuite.com

How to set up Hootsuite

Hootsuite get started and FAQ

Tweetdeck.com

Tweetchat.com

Tweetgrid.com

Tools for Analyzing Social Media

Twitter friend follower ratio

Klout.com

twittergrader.com

Hootsuite has built in analysis

Any others you like to use.. please post a comment!!

Free Press Release sites on Internet

Use these sites to spread the word on your current and future press releases:

www.free-press-release.com

www.prlog.org

www.1888pressrelease.com

www.pr-inside.com

WWW.webnewswire.com

Adding A Facebook url to Business Page

As an owner of a personal facebook account you have the option/ ability to create other pages, for a business, organizations, community, band, group, etc.   Here is a link to go right to the page to add a facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?ads#!/pages/create.php

Once you have set up your page, many forget to actually assign a facebook url to make it easier to find your page.

in order to set a url all you have to do is to click on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/username/

and you will see a page that looks like this:

next you just click on the link to “set a username for your page” this will create a url for you page like www.facebook.com/xyzcompany.

Preparing for The Worst

Here are two questions you need to ask yourself…..

If your computer “crashed” right now, would you still be able to operate your business effectively?

If your computer “crashed” right now, how soon can you have a replacement up and running?

Makes you think right?  I don’t think anyone wants to go through restoring files and reinstalling software..Following these tips will make your life easier,  should Murphy’s Law kick in decide to take out your computer.

1.  Keep all your data files in one central location: Knowing ahead of time where are your important files are located will ensure that what ever back up process you are using is actually backing up all the files that need to be backed up.

2. Back up your files:  Speaking of backing up…Make sure you have in place a back up system for your files.

Offline backup- using software to create a daily back up of your files

• Make sure you actually back up your files to a separate “media” location.  You would be surprised how many times i have come across clients that are backing up their important files on to the SAME harddrive as the files are all ready on.
• End of Month create a back up on a DVD or CD ( depending on the size of all the files you back up) and bring to another location.
• Determine a manageable amount of back up versions to keep before overwriting (5 days, 2 weeks, 30 days)
• TEST!! test your restore functions to make sure you know how to restore a file(s)

Online Back Up – Many online sites are available for automatic back up

• Carbonite.com : Annual fee of $55.00 extremely reasonable for the amount of time you save knowing your files are backed up constantly thru out the day.
• There are others out there, you can google for results.. but Carbonite by far has everything you need in online back up.
• My tip for carbonite – make sure you choose all the folders  you need backed up.. For example i make sure my desktop is backed up so that if you are “lazy” and just save files to your desktop before “filing them” you can be sure they will be backed up.

3. Keep a running list of the softwares you install along with any cd keys, passwords etc.  This way when you need to re-install your software you won’t have to dig around for the software and keys needed to register the product. Key a hard copy of this list in a secure location, because saving it on your computer does no good if that file was not backed up.

Where are all my Bank Reconciliations?

One of the minor flaws of Quickbooks Pro is the fact you can only access the most recent bank reconciliation. Of course when you are first deciding on what version to purchase, that is not one of the options even discussed or compared.

So what happens is that you go along your merry way maintaining your accounting records in the QuickBooks Pro software. You are reconciling each month with out a glitch, good job!!    Did you print out a hard copy of your bank reconciliation?   Most will probably say no.  Whether is it just they didn’t want to bother, or they are going “GREEN”,  the reconciliation report was never printed.

The problem is Quickbooks Pro only saves the most recent reconciliation. So you can never go back and view a reconciliation report for more that a month back.

In Quickbooks Premier you can always access all previous bank reconciliations you have completed. If you don’t wish to pay the extra money and upgrade to the Premier version, here is your work around.

In Quickbooks, when ever you call up any report; under the file menu there is a “save as pdf” menu option.  I recommend when you have reconciled for the month you choose the option to view the detailed report.  Once the report is on the screen;  you then choose the “save as pdf” option in your file menu and then save the pdf onto your hard drive in a place where you keep all of your business financial documents. This way you keep a pdf version of each reconciliation you complete for easy retrieval.

My email to Pandora Support!!

for your enjoyment.. I sent off an email today to pandora.. after frustration of being told i am in NORWAY~!!!!!

my recent email to Pandora support……

subject: help!! Trapped in “Norway”!!!

Dear Pandora,

I so love your website, and listen to it thru out the day. I am confused on your availability for a windows mobile phone.. I recently got an htc tilt 2 (thru at&t wireless) and when I try to go to www.pandora.com your error message tells me i am Norway!! How sweet! I have always wanted to travel abroad.. better yet move there.. !!! I am in Central New York so I am not sure why you are thinking I am in Norway?? ( or it that were all people go in frustration for not being able to get their Pandora on their phone!!!)

Please help me so I can “move back home” and enjoy my Pandora on my phone!!!

Joanne Del Balso

Updated 5pm… Pandora emailed back and send sorry we dont currently support your phone.. and that the Norway issue was from the opera browser on my phone… Good news is my searching on the internet found my answer from xda developers… thanks guys!!!

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=542581&page=2

this is working flawlessly on my at&t htc tilt 2!!!!