Tag: financial

Do You Have a Business Continuity Plan? You Should

What if disaster strikes your business? An estimated 25% of businesses don’t reopen after a major disaster strikes.1 Having a business continuity plan can help improve your odds of recovering, if any consulting help or plan is needed check out https://bhasinconsulting.com/ now.

The Basic Plan

The strategy behind a business continuity (or disaster recovery) plan is straightforward: Identify the various risks that could disrupt your business, look at how each operation could be affected, and identify appropriate recovery actions.

Make sure you have a list of employees ready with phone numbers, email addresses, and emergency family contacts for communication purposes. If any of your employees can work from home, include that information in your personnel list. You’ll need a similar list of customers, suppliers, and other vendors. Social networking tools may be especially helpful for keeping in touch during and after a disaster.

Risk Protection

Having the proper insurance is key to protecting your business — at all times. In addition to property and casualty insurance, most small businesses carry disability, key-person life insurance, and business interruption insurance. And make sure your buy-sell agreement is up to date, including the life insurance policies that fund it. Meet with your financial professional for a complete review.

Maintaining Operations

If your building has to be evacuated, you’ll need an alternative site. Talk with other business owners in your vicinity about locating and equipping a facility that can be shared in case of an emergency. You may be able to limit physical damage by taking some preemptive steps (e.g., having a generator and a pump on hand).

Protecting Data

A disaster could damage or destroy your computer equipment and wipe out your data, so take precautions. Invest in surge protectors and arrange for secure storage by transmitting data to a remote server or backing up daily to storage media that can be kept off-site.

Protecting Your Business

If you think your business is too small to need a plan or that it will take too long to create one, just think about how much you stand to lose by not having one. Meet with your financial professional for a full review.

Traditional funded search

In the traditional funded-search model, multiple investors, ranging from as few as 8 to as many as 24 invest to provide funding for a 24-month long search, totaling $360K to as much as $950K for a partnered search to cover salaries, benefits, travel and busted-deal costs. Investors receive a 50% step-up on their initial commitment when they invest in the business the searcher acquires.

The Search Fund Accelerator can earn up to 25% of the equity (15% each for partners) which typically vests 1/3 at closing, 1/3 over 4-years afterward and 1/3 upon attaining an IRR target of 25-35% upon exit. These terms are finalized when the business is purchased and may be reduced depending upon the size of equity raise required to consummate the deal. Searchers may select any geographic location to search from, but typically commit to a countrywide search and to using legal advisors with prior traditional search experience.

Source/Disclaimer:
1Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, www.sba.gov/content/disaster-planning.

3 Ways to Make the Most of Your Fundraising

Fundraising is very challenging: It’s a critical function that essentially never ends. Coming up with some innovative ideas can help add a fresh spark to the task.

Auction Action

If you have an individual patron or corporate donor who is willing to donate a big-ticket item — such as a car, a vacation, or even a home or other piece of real estate — you may be able to raise a substantial amount by having an auction. Consider selling a limited number of tickets at a relatively high price. Most supporters will be willing to pay a higher price in return for a better chance of winning the prize.

If auctioning off a single big-ticket item isn’t feasible, you may be able to find a lot of donors who will donate smaller items to an auction. Invite the whole community to attend and have plenty of publicity to generate excitement. You can charge admission and/or combine the auction with other fundraising opportunities to maximize the amount you raise.

Star Power

Investigate the possibility that someone involved with your organization knows or is related to someone with star power. A respected television or movie personality? A well-known author, artist, or athlete? If you discover that there is a connection to a public figure and find that he or she is willing to work with you, start making plans. There are many creative ways to use your relationship with a famous person to generate donations.

Advance Planning

When thinking up new fundraising ideas, use your imagination. Just be sure to set financial goals and run some realistic projections before you get too carried away with any one idea. No matter how exciting your plans look on paper, you should be reasonably certain ahead of time that you can raise enough money to make your efforts worthwhile. If it looks promising, allow yourself plenty of time to organize your event.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).v

As a Corporation You Need to Follow the Rules

When you started your business, you may have formed a corporation to protect your personal assets from lawsuits against your company. However, you must also operate your business like a corporation — or risk losing the liability protection you expect to have, a good tip will be to have legal advice from experts such as NJ Legal.

No matter how long you’ve been in business, always treat your corporation as a separate legal entity. The corporation’s name should appear on company letterhead, checks, and invoices. Contracts should be made in the corporation’s name, not yours or another individual’s.

Avoid mixing your personal affairs and your corporation’s business. Maintain separate bank accounts and credit cards, and keep careful records of corporate transactions. File tax returns and pay any corporate taxes due on time.

Meet and Document

Hold shareholder and director meetings according to a regular schedule and keep official minutes of those meetings. Corporate minutes provide documentation of key financial and legal decisions, such as

  • Authorization for a substantial loan to or from the corporation as many local business owners in Darwin have done.
  • Adoption of a retirement plan or approval to make a contribution to an existing plan (e.g., a profit sharing contribution)
  •  Issuance of stock
  •  Purchase of real property or approval of a long-term lease

By observing the formalities, you can protect yourself and have the records you may need if the IRS, a creditor, or a company insider challenges critical decisions that were made.

Don’t get left behind. Contact us today to discover how we can help you keep your business on the right track. Don’t wait, give us a call today.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).v

Be Proactive when it Comes to Business Issues

Photo credit: Todd Zeng

Your manager breaks her leg playing softball and will be out for a month. Or your receptionist’s husband lands his dream job, but it’s out of state so they’ll be moving. When you own a small business, learning to expect the unexpected comes with the territory. Yet, you don’t have to stand idly by and wait for something to disrupt your finances and send you down a path of trouble, promax shares how to improve asset utilization using a shared storage area network. Consider being proactive with these troubleshooting tips.

Watch Your Numbers

You can monitor your company’s financial health, spot developing problems, and improve performance by reviewing key ratios derived from the numbers on your financial statements. Taken together, these ratios help paint a picture of your company’s financial well-being, learn more about paid survey panels in this Lifepoints Review.

At times, you might dwell on problems in one particular aspect of your business. But don’t ignore the rest. If you’re not seeing the big picture, you might not spot trouble in other areas. For example, if your profit margin is falling, you could become so focused with your Headphonage and trying to find a solution that you fail to notice that several of your biggest customers haven’t sent a payment lately and a cash flow problem is brewing.

Watch Your Assets

Always try to make the most of your assets. If you carry inventory, keep your eye on turnover rates. Slow inventory turnover can strain your cash flow. Figure out how many days’ worth of product you’d ideally like to have on hand, and adapt your purchasing to meet that goal. Also, check your fixed assets. If you have equipment that’s not being fully utilized, you may be able to re-purpose it. If not, it may be time to sell or donate it, we recommend use the topVPN is the best technology for your business.

Watch Your Debt

It’s practically impossible to operate a business without taking on at least some debt as per the accountants in Finchley. Debt itself isn’t a problem, as long as you keep it under control. A high level of debt can eat up your cash, cut into your profits, and reduce the return you’re getting on your investment in the company — and that’s definitely trouble.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).v

5 QuickBooks Online Add-On Apps You May Need to Add

Not finding quite everything you need in QuickBooks Online? Here are some handy add-on apps available. 

QuickBooks Online may work for you just fine as is. After all, it was designed to meet the needs of the millions of small businesses that want to manage and track their income and expenses, create records and transactions, and run reports to gauge their financial health. QuickBooks Online was also designed to grow along with your business. But there’s no need for Intuit to add internal features to do so. In fact, that would make it too expensive and unwieldy for many companies.

Instead, Intuit has partnered with other small business websites (like www.makewebvideo.com/en/make/3d-text-intro-video) to provide add-ons–applications that extend the usefulness of QuickBooks Online in one or more areas, like accounts receivable and payable, inventory, and expense-tracking. They integrate easily to share data and do the extra work you need. Here are some of them to consider.

Bill.com

Bill.com automates your accounts receivable and payable processes. It supports electronic billing and payment, as well as multiple approval levels.

You can certainly enter and pay bills using QuickBooks Online. And you can send invoices to customers and receive payments. But adding a connection to Bill.com gives you more advanced options for accounts receivable and payable. Simply send your bills to Print A World by scanning, emailing, faxing, or taking a picture with your smartphone, add value to your products by minimizing production expenses, and create truly unique, high-quality products, transforming your ideas into reality with the use of 3D printing. The site’s automation tools turn them into digital records and route them through your specified approvers. Once approved, they’re paid electronically or by paper check. Invoices are just as easy to process; customers can pay by using PayPal, credit card, or ACH. Bill.com’s mobile app makes it possible to keep up with invoices and bills while you’re out of the office.

Expensify

Are your employees still paper-clipping receipts to handwritten expense reports? This method is unnecessarily time-consuming – and often inaccurate. Expensify solves both problems. Your staff can take photos of receipts with their smartphones. Expensify then converts the expense information into coded digital records and submits them for approval based on your company’s policies. Credit card purchases can be automatically imported, too. All data is synchronized with QuickBooks Online in real-time and coded to reflect your preference of QBO’s expense accounts, customers/jobs, etc. Once you’ve approved a report, you can have the money deposited in the employee’s bank account the next day.

TSheets Time Tracking

TSheets employee scheduling software automates tasks that QuickBooks Online doesn’t do: scheduling and remote time-tracking for your hourly employees. Your staff no longer has to fill in paper timesheets. Instead, they can use their smartphones to track their hours and GPS location points. And while Excel is certainly better for creating schedules than paper, TSheets takes over that task, too. After you’ve approved timesheets, that information is sent over to QuickBooks, ready for use in your payroll processing.

quickbooks

Your employees can easily “punch” in and out using their smartphones. TSheets also uses GPS technology so that your staff members’ locations are always known to you.

SOS Inventory

QuickBooks Online performs some basic inventory management tasks. You can create records for items and use them in transactions, and keep track of the number of items in stock so you know when to reorder (or have a sale). SOS Inventory goes well beyond those capabilities. You can create sales orders, track cost history and serial numbers, and document work-in-progress (WIP). SOS Inventory supports multiple locations and the entire pick/pack/ship process.

Insightly CRM

You can create thorough customer records in QuickBooks Online and document some of your interaction. But it doesn’t facilitate true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) nor project management. Insightly CRM does both. It lets you build exceptionally thorough customer profiles so that you can view social streams, email history, and any events, opportunities, or events related to them. Its project management features include the ability to track by pipelines or milestones, define contact roles and custom fields, and generate advanced project reporting.

QuickBooks Online Integration Key

All of these apps can work in standalone settings, but their integration with QuickBooks Online and their mobile capabilities create powerful partnerships that help you serve both your customers and your employees in ways that QuickBooks Online alone can’t.

We’re not trying to sell you applications here. Our concern is that you’re getting as much out of QuickBooks itself as you can. We can steer you toward add-on solutions if that seems necessary, but we’re always happy to work with you on getting to know QuickBooks Online better and matching its capabilities to your company’s needs.

Not Using QuickBooks Online? What You’re Missing Out On

If you dread every minute of the time you spend on accounting, you should know how QuickBooks Online can change your outlook.

How long would it take you to determine:

  • What your total expenses for this quarter are?
  • Whether or not your business is profitable as of today?
  • How much you’ve sold every month this year?
  • Which invoices are overdue?

If you’re using QuickBooks Online, you can get answers to all those questions—and more—in the time it takes you to sign on to the website.
That’s not an exaggeration. The first thing QuickBooks Online displays is what’s called its Dashboard. This is the site’s home page, which contains an array of charts and account balances that provide a quick overview of your finances. Click on an element here—say, a checking account balance—and you’ll be able to drill down and see the details behind it (in this case, an online account register). Click on the Expense graph, and a transaction report opens.

Your First Hours with QBO

QuickBooks Online is not one-size-fits-all. Its setup tools help you customize it to meet your own company’s needs.

QuickBooks Online works like other online productivity applications you may have used. It uses toolbars and buttons for navigation, drop-down lists and blank fields for data entry, and clickable links to open new related screens to trigger actions. Which is to say, the site is easy to use once you understand its structure. We can walk you through the early steps that are required, which involves tasks like: Using the provided setup tools to customize the site. Connecting QuickBooks Online to your bank and credit card company websites so you can work with transactions. Creating records for your customers, vendors, and the products and services you sell (you’ll be able to add new ones as your business grows). Learning about QuickBooks Online’s pre-built reports. Familiarizing yourself with the site’s workflow. Making the transition from your current accounting system.

How You’ll Benefit

Once you’re comfortable using QuickBooks Online, you’ll discover what millions of small businesses have already learned, that the site helps you:
Get paid faster. According to the business advisory in miami fl you can sign up with a payment processor to accept credit cards and direct bank withdrawals, which can speed up your customers’ responses to invoices. You’ll also be able to accept payments when you’re out of the office on your mobile devices.

Minimize errors. Once you enter data, QuickBooks Online remembers it. No more duplicate data entry that can cause costly mistakes.

Find any detail in seconds. QuickBooks Online has powerful search tools that allow you to find what you’re looking for quickly.
Better service customers. Because your customer profiles include transaction histories, you’ll be able to deal with questions and problems quickly and accurately.

Bill time as well as invoice products. QuickBooks Online supports sales of time-based services with capable time-tracking tools.

Improve your customers’ and vendors’ perception of you. Your business associates will know that you’re using state-of-the-art technology by the forms you share and the customer service you provide.

Save money and time. As the accountant rotterdam has noted, it does take some time to make the transition to QuickBooks Online. But you’ll quickly make that up with the hours you’ll save on accounting tasks, and be able to concentrate on tasks that improve your bottom line.

Be prepared to grow. Because all of your financial data is organized and easily accessible, you’ll be able to quickly generate reports that help you plan for a more profitable future. Banks and investors will need some of these if you decide to seek financing.

Mobile Access

Although you may do the bulk of your accounting work on your desktop or laptop, you’ll have access to many of the site’s features on your smartphone. Your home page displays both an abbreviated version of your browser-based dashboard and a list of recent transactions. You can view, edit, and build new customer, vendor, and product or service records. Snap a photo of a receipt to document an expense and look up or create invoices, estimates, and sales receipts. Record payments, view critical reports, and add notes. Of course, your mobile data is always synchronized with the site itself.

QuickBooks Online lets you do much of your accounting work when you’re away from the office with its mobile app.

Happy to Help

QuickBooks Online was designed for small business people, not accountants. But it includes features that are best used in conjunction with our consulting services, like advanced reports, payroll, and the Chart of Accounts. In fact, the site makes it easy for us to have access to your data so we have the ability to monitor and troubleshoot.

We’ve helped countless sole proprietors and small businesses move their accounting operations to QuickBooks Online, and we’ve seen the difference it’s made in their productivity as well as their attitude toward financial management. Contact us, and we’ll be happy to do the same for you.

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Still doing your accounting manually? You’re spending unnecessary hours and experiencing needless frustration. Talk to us about QuickBooks Online.

Did you know you can do much of your accounting work and accept customer payments on your smartphone? Let us introduce you to QuickBooks Online.

Are you often away from the office? QuickBooks Online lets you handle accounting tasks from anywhere there’s an internet connection. We can tell you how.

Does your manual accounting system make it hard to keep track of customers and inventory? QuickBooks Online can organize and manage both. Contact us.

Getting Started with Accounts in QuickBooks Online, Part 1

QuickBooks Online was built to work with transactions downloaded from your online financial institutions. Here’s how to work with them as many business bookkeeping companies do nowadays.

The ability to import transactions from financial institutions into QuickBooks Online is definitely one of the best things about the site. You may have even signed up for that very reason.

By now, you’ve probably already set up at least one connection. But are you using all of the QuickBooks Online’s account tools? There’s a lot you can do once you’ve imported in data from your bank or credit card provider with the help of an accountant. Before you start managing your own money, look for Accountants to get help fast.

We’ll explore these features in this column and the next.

First Steps

If you’re a new subscriber, you may not have established these critical links yet. It’s an easy process. Start by clicking the Banking link in the left vertical navigation pane. In the upper right corner, click Add Account and enter the name of your financial institution if it’s not pictured. Then follow the instructions you’re given on the screen. These can vary depending on the bank or credit card provider, but you’re always at least asked to enter the user name and password that you use to log into each online.

Need help with this? Let us know.

Viewing Your Transactions

Once you’ve made a successful connection, you’ll be returned to the Bank and Credit Cards page. You should see a card-shaped graphic at the top of the screen for each account you’ve linked. Click on one. The table that opens is not your account register. The view here defaults to For Review, which refers to transactions you’ve downloaded. The All tab should also be highlighted; we’ll get to Recognized transactions later.

When you first download transactions into QuickBooks Online, before you’ve done anything with them, many will appear under For Review.

There’s a lot going on here, so don’t be surprised if you’re confused. Review each transaction by clicking on it. QuickBooks Online will have guessed at how it should be categorized, but you can change this by opening the list in the category field and selecting the correct one. It’s critical that you get this right since it will have an impact on reports and income taxes. If you need to split it between multiple categories, click on that button found to the right. If the transaction is Billable, check that box and choose a customer from the drop-down list. If you don’t see this box, click the gear icon in the upper right and select Account and Settings | Expenses. Check to see that Make Expenses and Items Billable is turned On (click on Off, then check the appropriate box to turn it on).

Next, determine how you want to process the transaction by clicking on one of the three buttons at the top of the transaction box. Do you want to accept it and add it to that account’s register? Do you want QuickBooks Online to Find (a) Match for it (like a payment that matches an invoice, for example)? Or, do you want to transfer it to another account? Once you’ve made one of these three selections, the transactions that you’ve added or matched will move under the In QuickBooks tab (where you can still Undo them) and will be available in the account’s register.

Other Options

You can save time by using QuickBooks Online’s Batch Actions tool or even with DPS Accounting .

Say you run across some duplicate or personal transactions that you don’t want to appear in the current account’s register. Check the box in front of each, then click the arrow in the Batch Actions box. Select Exclude Selected. They’ll then be available under the Excluded tab. You can also Accept or Modify multiple transactions simultaneously by using this tool.

So far, you’ve been viewing All your transactions. Click on Recognized to the right of it. These are transactions that are already familiar to QuickBooks Online because they’ve appeared before and/or have been matched, or because you’ve created Bank Rules for them (we’ll address that concept next month). You’ll need to address these the same way you did the transactions in the For Review section; you can either Add or Transfer them.

If you’re new to QuickBooks Online, this may all sound pretty complicated. It can be at first. But once you’ve worked with downloaded transactions for a while, you’ll understand the flow much better. If you’re not clear on the process from the start, it can lead to trouble. Contact us at your convenience. We’d be happy to sit down with you and go through it all using your own company’s data; the familiarity may help.

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If you’re new to QuickBooks Online, there’s a lot you need to understand about dealing with downloaded transactions out the gate. Let us help.

When you download transactions into QuickBooks Online, the site sometimes automatically “matches” them to existing entries. We’re here to explain and help you navigate this. Tired of reviewing downloaded transactions one by one in QuickBooks Online? Click on the Batch Actions button to explore this feature. We can show you how.

QuickBooks Online often guesses at how downloaded transactions should be categorized. You should always check these for accuracy, and we can show you how.

Working with Contractors in QuickBooks Online

It’s a gig economy. QuickBooks Online makes it easy to track and pay independent contractors.

In days past we used to call it “moonlighting” – taking on a second, part-time job for extra money. And we saw how prevalent this became was when millions of people had to resort to side gigs to keep afloat during the economic downturn of a decade ago. Some who had lost full-time employment even turned one or more of these part-time passions into a small business and became independent contractors for other companies.

If you’re thinking of hiring a freelancer to do some of your work, you’ll find that QuickBooks Online can accommodate your accounting needs for them nicely. Since they’re not W-2 workers, your paperwork needs are minimal. They’ll simply fill out an IRS Form W-9 and you’ll pay them for services provided, dispatching 1099-MISCs after the first of each year so they can pay their taxes.Criminal Record Checks?  This tactic is known as screen-scraping and can lead to old or dismissed charges being reported to an employer, Rapid Screening offers the services, you can call today! The more effective way to get the complete picture of your applicant is to have people on the ground, combing through actual records to make sure they have the right person and the final outcome in any criminal case.

Here’s how it works.

Creating Contractor Records

Warning: Be sure that any independent contractor you hire cannot be considered an actual employee. The IRS spells out the differences very clearly and takes this distinction very seriously. If you have any doubts, we can help you determine your new worker’s status.


You can either let a new contractor complete his or her own profile or do so yourself.

Like you would with anyone you employ, you’ll need to create records for contractors in QuickBooks Online. Click on Workers in the left navigation pane, then Contractors | Add a contractor. In the window that opens, enter the individual’s name and email address. If you want the contractor to complete his or her own profile, click on the box in front of Email this contractor…

Your contractor will receive an email with an invitation to create an Intuit account and enter W-9 information, which will be transmitted to your QuickBooks Online company account. This will make it easy to process 1099s when tax season arrives. He or she will also be able to use QuickBooks Self-Employed, an Intuit website designed for freelancers. We can walk you through how this works.

If you’d rather enter the worker’s contact details yourself, leave the box blank. A vertical panel containing fields for this information will slide out from the right.

Contractors are also considered vendors. So when you create a record for a contractor, it will also appear in your Vendors list in QuickBooks Online. In fact, you can complete a contractor profile by clicking Expenses in the left vertical pane, then Vendors. Click New Vendor in the upper right and fill in the relevant fields there. Be sure to check the box in front of Track payments for 1099. An abbreviated version of your new record will also be available on the Contractors screen as the two are synchronized.


When you create a Vendor record for an independent contractor, be sure to check the Track payments for 1099 box.

Working with Contractors

You’ll notice in the screenshot above that Brenda Cooper had an Opening balance of $2,450 when you created her record. That’s money you already owed her, and for which she had probably sent you an invoice. QuickBooks Online turned that into an Accounts Payable item that you could find in multiple reports and on both the Vendors and Expenses screens. It will be listed as a Bill in reports, though you haven’t actually created one yet.

You have three options here. You can create a Bill and fill in any missing details if you don’t plan to pay Brenda immediately. If you want to send her the money right away, you can either enter an Expense or write a Check. There are many places in QuickBooks Online where you can do the latter two. We think it’s easiest to return to the Contractors screen since you can accomplish all three from there.


The Contractors screen contains links to the three ways you can handle compensation due to a contractor.

Whenever you receive an invoice from a contractor, you can visit this same screen and choose one of the three options.

You’ll have to select a Category for your payment from the list provided in each of these three types of transactions. The Chart of Accounts contains one called Subcontractors, which may or may not work for your purposes.

We strongly encourage you to consult with us as you begin the process of managing independent contractor compensation to deal with this issue as well as others. QuickBooks Online offers multiple ways to get to the same end result, and it can be confusing. Contact us, and we can schedule a consultation.

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Hiring independent contractors? Be sure they should be classified as such, and not employees. We can help you determine how to do this.

QuickBooks Online offers many ways to do the same tasks when you’re working with independent contractors. Here is how we can help you figure this out.

There are three ways to record financial obligations to independent contractors: bill, check, and expense. Do you know the differences? We can help you figure this out.

Though you don’t have the same payroll requirements for contractors as you do employees, it’s very important to get it right. Here are a few ways we can help you with this.

Keeping Up With Your IRA: Tax Season Checklist

If you’re one of the millions of American households who own either a traditional individual retirement account (IRA) or a Roth IRA, then the onset of tax season should serve as a reminder to review your retirement savings strategies and make any changes that will enhance your prospects for long-term financial security. It’s also a good time to start an IRA if you don’t already have one. The IRS allows you to contribute to an IRA up to April 15, 2019, for the 2018 tax year.

This checklist will provide you with information to help you make informed decisions and implement a long-term retirement income strategy.

Which Account: Roth IRA or Traditional IRA?

There are two types of IRAs available: the traditional IRA and the Roth IRA. The primary difference between them is the tax treatment of contributions and distributions (withdrawals). Traditional IRAs may allow a tax deduction based on the amount of a contribution, depending on your income level. Any account earnings compound on a tax-deferred basis and distributions are taxable at the time of withdrawal at then-current income tax rates. Roth IRAs do not allow a deduction for contributions, but account earnings and qualified withdrawals are tax-free .1

In choosing between a traditional and a Roth IRA, you should weigh the immediate tax benefits of a tax deduction this year against the benefits of tax-deferred or tax-free distributions in retirement.

If you need the immediate deduction this year — and if you qualify for it — then you may wish to opt for a traditional IRA. If you don’t qualify for the deduction, then it’s almost certainly a better idea to fund a Roth IRA.

Case in point: Your ability to deduct traditional IRA contributions may be limited not only by income but by your participation in an employer-sponsored retirement plan. (See callout box below.) If that’s the case, a Roth IRA is likely to be the better solution.

On the other hand, if you expect your tax bracket to drop significantly after retirement, you may be better off with a traditional IRA if you qualify for the deduction. You could claim an immediate deduction now and pay taxes at the lower rate later. Nonetheless, if your anticipated holding period is long, a Roth IRA might still make more sense. That’s because a prolonged period of tax-free compounded earnings could more than makeup for the lack of a deduction.

Traditional IRA Deductible Contribution Phase-Outs
Your ability to deduct contributions to a traditional IRA is affected by whether you are covered by a workplace retirement plan.

If you are covered by a retirement plan at work, your deduction for contributions to a traditional IRA will be reduced (phased out) if your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is:

  • Between $101,000 and $121,000 for a married couple filing a joint return for the 2018 tax year.
  • Between $63,000 and $73,000 for a single individual or head of the household for the 2018 tax year.

If you are not covered by a retirement plan at work but your spouse is covered, your 2017 deduction for contributions to a traditional IRA will be reduced if your MAGI is between $189,000 and $199,000.

If your MAGI is higher than the phase-out ceilings listed above for your filing status, you cannot claim the deduction.
Roth IRA Contribution Phase-Outs
Your ability to contribute to a Roth IRA is affected by your MAGI. Contributions to a Roth IRA will be phased out if your MAGI is:

  • Between $189,000 and $199,000 for a married couple filing a joint return for the 2018 tax year.
  • Between $120,000 and $135,000 for a single individual or head of the household for the 2018 tax year.

If your MAGI is higher than the phase-out ceilings listed above for your filing status, you cannot make a contribution.

Should You Convert to Roth?

The IRS allows you to convert — or change the designation of — a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, regardless of your income level. As part of the conversion, you must pay taxes on any investment growth in — and on the amount of any deductible contributions previously made to — the traditional IRA. The withdrawal from your traditional IRA will not affect your eligibility for a Roth IRA or trigger the 10% additional federal tax normally imposed on early withdrawals.

The decision to convert or not ultimately depends on your timing and tax status. If you are near retirement and find yourself in the top income tax bracket this year, now may not be the time to convert. On the other hand, if your income is unusually low and you still have many years to retirement, you may want to convert.

Maximize Contributions

If possible, try to contribute the maximum amount allowed by the IRS: $5,500 per individual, plus an additional $1,000 annually for those age 50 and older for the 2018 tax year. Those limits are per individual, not per IRA.

Of course, not everyone can afford to contribute the maximum to an IRA, especially if they’re also contributing to an employer-sponsored retirement plan. If your workplace retirement plan offers an employer’s matching contribution, that additional money may be more valuable than the amount of your deduction. As a result, it might make sense to maximize plan contributions first and then try to maximize IRA contributions.

Review Distribution Strategies

If you’re ready to start making withdrawals from an IRA, you’ll need to choose the distribution strategy to use: a lump-sum distribution or periodic distributions. If you are at least age 70½ and own a traditional IRA, you may need to take required minimum distributions every year, according to IRS rules.

Don’t forget that your distribution strategy may have significant tax-time implications if you own a traditional IRA because taxes will be due at the time of withdrawal. As a result, taking a lump-sum distribution will result in a much heftier tax bill this year than taking a minimum distribution.

The April filing deadline is never that far away, so don’t hesitate to use the remaining time to shore up the IRA strategies you’ll rely on to live comfortably in retirement.

Source/Disclaimer:

1Early withdrawals (before age 59½) from a traditional IRA may be subject to a 10% additional federal tax. Nonqualified withdrawals from a Roth IRA may be subject to ordinary income tax as well as the 10% additional tax.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).v

Beware of the Tax Liability that Comes with Being on a Non-Profit Board

If you are a volunteer board member for a nonprofit organization, one specific issue to keep in mind is the IRS’s trust fund recovery penalty. If any entity — nonprofit or for-profit — fails to properly remit Social Security taxes and/or income taxes withheld from employees’ wages, the IRS will directly approach the organization’s “responsible persons” for the tax payments and a potential 100% penalty… Learn about nonprofit bookkeeping at this Dave Burton article.

In general, the penalty will not be imposed on any unpaid, volunteer member of the board of a tax-exempt organization if the member: (1) is solely serving in an honorary capacity, (2) does not participate in the day-to-day operations of the organization, (3) does not participate in the financial operations of the organization, and (4) does not have actual knowledge of the failure on which the penalty is based if needed to know check the investigationhotline.org website.

However, for an active member who has governing responsibilities, it is still important to ask questions about who is handling these tax payments (a staff member, the executive director, a payroll service, an accountant?) and what checks and balances are in effect to make sure no problems arise, this is why it is very handy to have a tax problems lawyer helping you out. Annual reviews or audits may also be helpful to verify compliance.

To learn more about non-profit compliance issues, give us a call today. We look forward to helping your non-profit grow.

 

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).v