The Virtual CFO

If You Increase Taxes on Corporations, the Consumer Will Pay for the Increase

In my last blog post, I wrote how the nation’s economic recovery needs to start with me.

I know some of the readers of this blog will respond back that many large corporations have been able to work the political system in order to pay little or no income taxes. So you feel that the recovery should start with the corporations and then you would be willing to have the focus be on me.

I understand the negative sentiment towards Wall Street right now. I’m an entrepreneur and my company, CPA for Small Business, was created to serve entrepreneurs and small businesses. I know firsthand that entrepreneurs pay their fair-share in self-employment and income taxes. Most entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of lobbyist, tax breaks, and a department of tax attorneys who enable us to pay minimal tax in comparison to our profits.

However, I know what will happen if corporations are required to pay more in taxes. The corporations will merely pass their increased tax cost on to the consumer, which are you and me.

I remember the last oil price spike and how during the oil spike period that “big oil” experienced record profits. Oil companies had profit margins they wanted to maintain. Ten-percent of $125/barrel is larger than ten-percent of $89/barrel.  The oil companies target margin was merely added to the increased cost per barrel.

So as I said, we all have to be willing to participate in our nation’s recovery. It may be better if all of us decide up front to bear the burden of solving the deficit. Because no matter what strategy is chosen by our leaders, all of us will eventually end up participating financially.

I’m Willing to Have the Recovery Start with Me, Are You?

One of the universal truths is that no one wants to pay more in taxes. A second universal truth is that most of the people who are vocal in the news on this subject support tax increases on somebody else in society besides themselves or cutting spending on programs that don’t personally affect them or their livelihood.

I understand these sentiments, but feel we need to move beyond this if the U.S. is going to correct the deficit problem we’re facing.

We’ve come to a point with the deficit and our economy where something needs to be done. Unfortunately, congress seems to think that we can fix the problem with a combination of lowering taxes and raising expenditures.

I believe that we all have a responsibility to educate ourselves on the realities our country is facing instead of polarizing this serious issue because of politics. This is why I suggest you put aside 45 minutes or so and watch this video entitled “Where We Are, How We Got here, What May Be Next” by KPCB.

USA Inc. - Where We Are, How We Got here, What May Be Next from KPCB on Vimeo.

This nonpartisan presentation explains the U.S. economy as if it were a business and presents ideas on how to solve the deficit problem. One of the interesting facts is that expenses have exceeded revenues in the U.S. for forty of the last forty-five years. So both sides of the aisle are culpable for the deficit.

I don’t have all the answers, but I know that to fix the deficit problem that all of us will be affected with a combination of tax increases and federal spending cuts.

As Andy Stanley said, I’m willing to have the recovery start with me, are you?

 

Should Entrepreneurs Strive to Hit Homeruns or Singles?

CPA for Small Business serves clients in a wide range of industries. Across all industries, one of the primary topics of discussion is whether to try and make it big (home run) or strive for incremental growth (singles).

I owned an entrepreneurial logistic company in the mid-1990’s. The goal I had with this company was to grow as fast as I could with the resources I had at my disposal. Whenever I had enough cash hire a new employee and set them up with a desk and computer, I did.

There were also four or five times I “bet the company” during the four years I owned this firm. By betting the company, I mean that I took most of the cash reserves I had built up and invested them in marketing in an effort to either grow or turn the company around during periods of slow sales. The last time I bet the firm I lost and my logistics firm eventually failed.

Over the years, I’ve come to see that it is far better to focus on singles than swinging for the fence every time you step up to the plate. By basing your business on incremental growth, you are more likely to have a strong foundation of customers and sales. With a solid foundation, home runs then become the icing on the cake as opposed to a means of survival.

I wonder what you think about this.

Restaurant Owner Receives a Surprise Sales Tax Audit, Xtranormal Style

This Xtranormal animation was part of a presentation on tax obligations for small businesses I made at PodCamp Nashville 2010. I hope you enjoy.

 

Repeat Offenders are Common in Bookkeeper Fraud

Last week, the Kingsport Times News reported that a Knoxville bookkeeper had plead guilty to stealing $4 million from her employer (East Tennessee Bookkeeper Who Stole $4 Million to Finance Luxury Lifestyle Pleads Guilty). What was disturbing about this story is that the perpetrator was on probation for embezzling from another employer two years earlier.

Unfortunately, this story isn’t unique. It is often the case that those committing fraud have done so at previous jobs.

I was once the CFO of a company that was owned by a person who owned multiple businesses in the same industry. A year or so before I started working at this firm, a bookkeeper had used the owner’s signature stamp to sign checks that were deposited in the bookkeeper’s personal bank account. The bookkeeper was prosecuted when the owner discovered the fraud. A few years later, I was at CFO of another company where a vendor had the same bookkeeper use a knife to pick the lock where the company’s checks were stored. These checks were deposited in the bookkeeper’s personal bank account.

What can you do to protect yourself from this happening at your firm?

There are a couple of things you can do to lower the chances that your firm will be the victim of this type of bookkeeper fraud.

The first is to run a criminal background check before making a final job offer to a bookkeeper. Such background checks may run several hundred dollars, but it’s a relatively small amount when compared to what undetected fraud can cost your business. At a recent fraud training session I attended, the speaker told how a motorcycle dealership in Middle Tennessee had to file bankruptcy as a result of a bookkeeper embezzling. Choosing $300 over a liquidation bankruptcy is an easy choice to make.

Second, you can have someone other than the bookkeeper reconcile and review your bank accounts on a monthly basis. If you have time to do this yourself, then you should. If not, a CPA firm can provide this service for you at reasonable costs. By putting a control like this in place, it lets the bookkeeper know that someone else will be reviewing the bank accounts for improper transactions. This should lower the chances that they will attempt to embezzle from your business.

As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

There is No Such Thing as Long-Term Tax Planning

Over the last few weeks, I have been monitoring the debate in Washington about tax rates for 2011. As a CPA who advises clients on tax startegies, it's my job to keep up with this. Though I feel it’s unfortunate that congress waited to the last minute to address the issue, it has given all Americans a look at how tax laws are negotiated in our country.

On a news program last week, one of the commentators said someone wanted pass “permanent tax rates”. What I think they meant is that someone in congress wanted to make the current tax brackets the law, instead of just extending them. That sounds good in theory, but in practice there is no such thing as permanent tax rates. Congress always has the power to adjust the rates and tax rules any time they feel changes are appropriate.

It would probably help the economy if there was a set of tax brackets and rules that could be kept in effect for an extended period of time. But in the current political climate I don’t see that occurring.
If businesses and individuals knew what their tax burden would be and the tax rules that would be in effect several years down the road, they would probably be more inclined to make investments that would help the economy. Without this, you have what Donny Deutsch described last Friday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe (transcript) as $2 trillion dollars that business is holding on the sidelines and not investing because they don’t know if Washington is going to be pro- or anti- business in the coming years. 

Hopefully, the tax rate compromise will ease some of these fears and provoke businesses and individuals to start investing again.

But as all tax preparers know, there is no such thing as long-term tax planning because tax rules can, and often do, change.

Take a Look at Credit Unions for Your Small Business Banking Needs

I’ve changed my mind about small business banking.

One of the first things I did when I established CPA for Small Business, LLC was open a checking account at a bank that I considered “small business friendly”.

My definition of small business friendly is one that you can build a relationship with where your business banking officer knows you as well as understands your business. (Caveat, the business owner has to take the initiative to build the relationship)

A small business friendly bank will generally give you the benefit of the doubt because they have a relationship with you. They service their customers like the banks I dealt with when I started my professional career in the early 1990’s.Which means that there are loans that all banks will or won’t make, but a small business friendly bank will work with you if you are in the grey area because they have a personal relationship with you.

In August, my small business friendly bank sent out a notice that they were going to start charging $9.00 a month for checking and savings accounts unless you carried a significantly high average balance. Faced with paying $216 a year for services that were free for the prior four and a half years, I began to look at the banking alternatives for CPA for Small Business.

My wife Linda and I keep our personal checking and savings with Baxter Credit Union (BCU), a Chicagoland based credit union. Linda informed me that BCU had business accounts and upon investigation we discovered that BCU’s minimum balance for service charges was a lot lower than that of the bank we used, which would allow us to continue avoiding service charges on our bank accounts.

So in October, we moved CPA for Small Business checking and savings to Baxter Credit Union.
Since the move, we have been making deposits at The Tennessee Credit Union, a sister credit union located in Nashville.

Today, Linda pointed out to me that BCU was now allowing account holders to scan checks and make deposits at their home or office at no charge. BCU allows you to scan checks for deposits on your personal scanner as long as your scanner meets a set of minimum requirements (which most late model scanners do). This is a great service that most banks charge a monthly service charge for the ability to make remote deposits plus a fee per check deposited from your office. And unlike other bank’s remote deposit products, BCU doesn’t require you to purchase a scanner or software from them.

So you may want to see if you qualify for a credit union for your business banking needs. We’re very happy with our decision to move CPA for Small Business’s banking to a credit union.

A Little Brick and Mortar Mixed with the Virtual at CPA for Small Business

As I discussed in my last post, CPA for Small Business, LLC has experienced quite a bit of growth the last two years and that the volume of work has been high over the last twelve months. As a result, my backlog of work to perform has stayed steady because I haven’t had any slow periods where I could dedicate time to work down the backlog.

Since mid-2009, I’ve been trying to find the best solution to handle the growth of my firm. I looked into hiring a staff accountant as well as utilizing interns from local colleges. Even though both of these were viable options, I just wasn’t comfortable enough to commit to either of these alternatives.

As many readers of this blog know, my first entrepreneurial endeavor (a logistics company I opened in 1993) failed. The major reason for this failure was that I tried to grow too quickly by adding staff whenever I had the cash reserves to do so. When the markets we served suffered a major downturn in the mid-1990’s, I had marginal cash reserves which made it impossible to react to and/or ride out the downturn.

Learning from my first entrepreneurial start-up, I’ve been slow to add the expense of staff or overhead to my public accounting firm, even though the volume is near (or already at) the point where it is necessary.

I’m really glad I waited because an opportunity developed a few weeks ago that is a perfect fit for CPA for Small Business, LLC.

This week, I will begin working under the same roof as Nestor CPA Services, Inc. Steve Nestor and I started negotiating a practice continuance agreement between our two public accounting firms a month or so ago and it grew into a deal where we’ll be sharing offices and resources.

We have worked together in the past, so I already have a good working relationship with Steve and his staff. Our practices have different strengths, so the synergy between the two firms will definitely benefit our clients.

I’m really excited about this because I know my clients will benefit from these changes.

I guess you could say that growth has caused me to mix a little brick and mortar with the virtual at CPA for Small Business, LLC.

Clients Come First, I’ll Write Virtual CFO Blog Post When I Can, Changes Coming

OK, it’s been a month and a half since my last Virtual CFO Blog post.

I probably should have taken the advice Bill Seaver (social media guru at MicroExplosion Media) gave me in April and written a post explaining why I haven’t been posting regularly. Especially since I wrote an “I’m now back to blogging regularly post” on May 20th (yes, I read my own posts < grin >).

Over the last couple of years, CPA for Small Business, LLC has experienced quite a bit of growth. As a result, I have had a steady, high volume of work over the last year or so. Which is quite different from the typical tax related seasonality experienced at most public accounting firms.

Since the volume has been steady, I haven’t had slow periods where I could get caught up on the backlog of work I have on the books. I know this is a good problem to have and I feel very blessed to have this dilemma, especially when you consider that our country has been in a recession during this period (since December 2007).

So over the past month and a half, I choose to perform work for clients instead of write blog posts. When faced with this choice, I will always choose serving clients over any other business activity.

I believe that my client related work volume will continue to grow, so it would be better if I say I’ll write Virtual CFO Blog posts and series when I can. I hope to have more time to write in the future, but if I don’t post for a few weeks you know I’m busy serving my clients.

Thank you for reading the Virtual CFO Blog!

BTW, next week I'll be announcing some major changes that are occurring at CPA for Small Business, LLC. The changes are being made to better serve my clients as my public accounting firm grows. 

Staffing a Growing Entrepreneurial Business –Culture, the Secret Sauce

Merriam-Webster.com defines culture as “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization”.

I define culture as the secret sauce that makes your company unique and differentiates it from the competition. It is the secret sauce of your business that causes customers to patronize your firm over the competition.

I have high expectations for the level of customer service client’s receive from CPA for Small Business, LLC. Part of the culture of my public accounting firm is that I take the time to get to know my clients and their businesses. I have a small town banking approach to public accounting and I believe that it enables me to better serve my clients. I also expect anyone associated with CPA for Small Business to have the same customer service approach to client relationships.

The culture of an organization starts at the top. In my twelve year career as a CFO, I worked in a variety of corporate cultures. One of the constants I observed was that the culture of the business was molded after the owners and top managers of the firm. If they were cut-throat, the employees generally followed suit and a cut-throat attitude was exhibited towards the firm’s customers. Conversely, if the owners or top managers treated their employees with integrity, I witnessed that employees treated each other with integrity as well as the company’s customers. Though these are two extremes, I use them to demonstrate how important culture is to your business.

This is why it is so important that you be sensitive to the culture of your business as it grows. If you, or the employees you hire as you grow, are allowed to negatively impact your businesses culture, you will lose the customer who helped your firm get off the ground.

If your entrepreneurial /small business is going to survive in today’s competitive market, you have to do what is necessary to protect your firm's secret sauce, its culture.