In response to the ongoing crisis caused by coronavirus, the Department of Labor is charged with implementing new emergency sick leave requirements that apply to all employers with under 500 employees, with some exceptions (see below). The new law goes into effect on April 2. Essentially, there are two parts to the new law: Mandatory...Read More

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from small business owners recently about two related topics: 1. how to reimburse employees for business expenses, and 2. how to claim the home office deduction. Both of these questions can be answered by using something called an accountable plan. A recent article in the AICPA’s Journal of...Read More

Health savings accounts (HSAs) are used in conjunction with high deductible health plans and offer five tax advantages compared to traditional savings accounts: Your own contributions to the HSA are tax-deductible in the current year. Employer contributions to the HSA are excluded from income. Earnings inside the HSA (i.e. interest, dividends, and capital gains) are...Read More

Parents who own businesses have a few tax incentives for hiring their children to work in their business: Shifting income to a lower (or 0%) tax bracket: If you hire your child to work in the business, any wages paid to him/her will be deductible by the business. Suppose that your combined federal and state...Read More

A potential downside of tax-deferred saving through a traditional retirement plan is that you’ll have to pay taxes when you make withdrawals at retirement. Roth plans, on the other hand, allow tax-free distributions; the tradeoff is that contributions to these plans don’t reduce your current-year taxable income. Unfortunately, your employer might not offer a Roth...Read More