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Be Attentive to Employee and Worker Concerns

As part of our blog series on tax literacy, MBDA will highlight the latest tax-related news issued by the IRS for business owners.  The material presented in this website is not offered as legal or tax advice.  You are urged to seek the advice of your tax advisor, attorney, and/or financial planner for any issue related to tax obligations.

Payroll

Maintaining good payroll records is critical for both you and your employees. Keep all records of employment taxes for at least 4 years. They should be available for IRS review. The following is a list of some of the records you should keep:

I attended the 42^nd Annual Meeting of the National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC) and came away with extraordinary news and a more optimistic outlook on the growth and expansion of the minority business community.  Today, NAIC released a quantitatively focused report that underscores the strong performance of minority and women-owned private equity firms.  These firms create new jobs and expand the U.S. economy by providing much needed capital to the nation’s minority- and women-owned businesses. 

The report, referred to by its short name, Recognizing the Results, is formally titled The Financial Returns of NAIC Firms: Minority and Diverse Private Equity Managers and Funds Focused on the U.S. Emerging Domestic Markets.  Compiled by the highly respected accounting firm KPMG, Recognizing the Results demonstrates that NAIC members—27 minority and diverse private equity firms focused on the U.S. emerging domestic markets – have outperformed the overall private equity industry for the past 13 years.  These results capture a representative sample of the larger sector of diverse and minority private equity firms. 

Are you a woman who is ready to start or expand a small business? Now’s a good time to take that first step, with help from a U.S. Small Business Administration series of four web chats during October, which is also National Women’s Small Business Month.

Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing segments of the small business community. Today, about 30 percent of small businesses are owned by women, compared to about 5 percent in 1970.

President Obama created the White House Business Council to hear directly from business owners about what the Administration can do more of – or less of – to help create jobs; and to ensure that businesses are aware of the programs and resources that can help their companies grow. That’s exactly what occurred last week at the White House Business Council Forum on Business in Indian Country. The Forum brought Native American and Alaska Native business owners together with non-profit Indian Country support organizations to discuss ideas that can lead to job creation and economic expansion. We were proud to have the participation of Acting Secretary of Commerce, Dr. Rebecca Blank, who listened and responded candidly to a number of concerns, suggestions and feedback.

Overall, the day’s dialogue centered around three core challenges—preparing and retaining future leaders and entrepreneurs; raising capital for emerging businesses; and finding domestic and international markets for tribal commodities such as natural resources and agricultural products.

What’s Level 1A? At Level 1, there is a single innovative idea. It improves or expands the existing business and measuring its success is no different from measuring the performance of the existing business. Also, there is no need to hire new kinds of experts or to substantially change job descriptions or core business process. At Level 1A, innovations can be implemented in a short time period — at most, a few months.

Innovation Principles: The most fundamental innovation discipline is one of learning quickly from experiments. That is easiest when feedback is rapid and the innovation makes only limited departures from the existing business. The most prepared innovators identify the specific performance measures that are likely to be affected by the innovation, understand how those changes will impact profitability, and are ready to react quickly should the experiment produce disappointing results.

The discipline of innovation is first and foremost a discipline of experimentation. Innovation projects have uncertain outcomes. Many managers, by training, abhor uncertainty. They endeavor to eliminate as much of it as possible. The more accurate the forecasts, the better the decision-making, the thinking goes.