Overlooked Deductions

You should take every single write-off you are due…what’s available may surprise you. Here’s a classic example: Small companies frequently miscategorize the cost of business-trip hotel stays as entertainment (50% deductible) rather than lodging (100%). The feds are only too happy to hang on to this windfall.

Monthly dinner at a restaurant,can be treated as an off-site strategic planning meeting (100% deductible) rather than a business meal with a client (50%).

Even coffee and Dunkin’ Donuts for the Friday morning meeting can be a full 100% deduction.

Hidden Tax Credits

Make your accountant aware of every person you hire. Some of them may qualify you for generous tax savings. If you employ certain types of disadvantaged workers, you may be eligible for the lucrative Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC).

Congress spells out with extreme precision which workers qualify. Here are some examples: those between the ages of 18 and 39 who live in federally designated enterprise communities; ex-felons hired within one year of their release date; recently discharged veterans injured in the line of duty and out of work for six months or more.

The WOTC is tailor-made for restaurants, retailers, and other industries that use a lot of unskilled labor. Yet tax experts note that these very businesses, especially small ones, hardly ever claim it.

Organization Pays Off

A few years back, the IRS trimmed its collection activities. Now the pendulum has swung back, and the IRS is looking for easy targets. Small businesses are notoriously sloppy record keepers. It is all too easy to be a disorganized entrepreneurs, especially when they are just starting out, or when running the actual business occupies most of their time.

You don’t want to have a brush with the IRS, even if it is not an audit. Many small business owner have found devices such as Neat Receipts to get more organized. This device allows you to scan all receipts, invoices, and documents directly into your piece. It allows you to stay organized, especially when space is limited…everything is buckuped on your computer.

Timing Tricks

What deductions you’re able to take is not the only consideration. It also matters when you take them. With taxes, as with so much else in business, timing is key.

Writing off such major purchases usually takes years and must be done in accordance with depreciation schedules laid out by the IRS. Do research, or have you accountant take the time to find ways to accelerate various deductions, allowing you to get more money more quickly.

Transportation Savings

Vehicle deductions can be particularly tricky. Many owners are unaware of how much money they’re losing through poor tax planning.

If you travel great distances to service your clients, you may be logging more than enough miles to consider an alternative to a normal write-off. For normal write-offs, a car or light truck gets a write-off of $3,060 in year one to $1,775 in the fourth year and onward until you’ve depreciated the purchase price. You can also deduct the cost of insurance, repairs, and gasoline.

The alternative to normal write-off is a simple deduction based on how many miles you drive. You can not depreciate the cost of the vehicle or write-off gasoline, but comparing the two you may be able to increase your write-off over the normal deduction. For 2008 it’s 50.5 cents a mile, up from 48.5 cents in 2007.

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Under Wayne Spilove’s leadership, an extensive $100 million restoration project of Philadelphia’s City Hall was initiated, and continues still, through both public and private support.

Throughout its history this huge granite structure, built in 1871-1901 in the French Second-Empire architectural style, had weathered many challenges, including lack of funds for maintenance and periods of neglect and vandalism.

That is finally changing. A restoration of the building’s lavish statuary and exteriors, perhaps the nation’s largest-ever art conservation effort, is slowly transforming its dingy main floors into bright granite and marble. Ironwork that was once rusty is now a crisp white. Viewed from the northwest, the renewed facades are a shining panorama its builders could only imagine.

With about 27 acres of floor space, this is bigger than every other municipal seat in the nation, all 50 state capitols and the national Capitol. The American Institute of Architects called it “perhaps the greatest single effort of late-19th-century American architecture.”

Floodlighted at night, the building’s silhouette once again squares with the impressions of the poet Walt Whitman, who lived across the river in Camden, N.J. Observing its construction, he wrote that City Hall was “a majestic and lovely show there in the moonlight,” “silent, weird, beautiful.”

It would be illegal for KFC to abuse dogs, cats, pigs, or cows in these ways.KFC’s own animal welfare advisors have asked the company to take steps to eliminate these abuses, but KFC refuses to do so. Many advisors have now resigned in frustration.

Sign the petition!

Watch more videos at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.

Dennis F. Campbell, 59, of Orwigsburg, faces up to five years in prison after admitting his part in what prosecutors say was a 14-year plan that allowed Cressona-based Schuylkill Products Inc. to pocket $121 million. Schuylkill Products Inc. received money under a minority set-aside construction contract program; money that it was not entitled to receive.

Campbell admitted the one charge against him, conspiracy to defraud and commit mail fraud, in a 25-minute hearing before U.S. Senior District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo, who did not set a date for sentencing and allowed the defendant to remain free before it without having to post bail.

“The defendant, has agreed to cooperate with the United States in the ongoing investigation of this matter,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce D. Brandler told Rambo during the hearing.

Brandler said after the hearing that “substantial” cooperation by Campbell could lead to a lighter sentence for him, although the actual recommendation would not be made until the sentencing hearing. In addition to the possible five-year prison term, Campbell could be sentenced to pay costs, a $250,000 fine and a $100 special assessment, and serve a three-year term of supervised release after any prison term.

Defendants in such cases are usually not sentenced until after they complete their cooperation, Brandler said.

Brandler said he was not at liberty to say if anyone else would be prosecuted as a result of the investigation.

“Nothing has been filed,” he said. Brandler declined to identify any other possible targets of the investigation, or what led the government to start the probe. While no one else has been targeted at this time, it is believed that this plea could set the stage for more prosecutions.

“Until we actually charge someone,” it is inappropriate to identify people as targets of an investigation, Brandler said.

Prosecutors say, and Campbell admitted, that Schuylkill Products and its subsidiary, CDS Engineers Inc., used minority-owned Marikina Construction Corp., West Haven, Conn., as a front from 1993 through 1997 to obtain $121 million in highway construction contracts across Pennsylvania.

Marikina was certified as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise under a U.S. Department of Transportation programs that sets aside a percentage of highway contracts for such businesses. Marikina would receive a small fixed fee for each contract and Schuylkill Products pocketed the rest, according to prosecutors.

“In essence, Schuylkill Products and CDS rented Marikina’s name,” Brandler told Rambo. “Marikina would not be obligated to do anything.”

Schuylkill Products and CDS employees engaged in such fraudulent practices as preparing documents on Marikina letterheads, using Marikina’s computer password on computers and putting magnetic placards with Marikina’s name on Schuylkill Products vehicles, Brandler told Rambo.

Marikina is owned by Romeo Cruz, a naturalized American citizen of Filipino descent.

Campbell said little during the hearing and both he and his attorney, Frederick J. Fanelli, Pottsville, declined to comment on the case after the hearing.

Brandler said after the hearing that federal investigators are examining whether Schuylkill Products and CDS used the same tactic elsewhere.

“Part of our investigation is to determine whether this activity extended to other states,” he said. It may be possible that the same tactics were used in states other than Pennsylvania.

To Yahoo! Inc.’s co-founder, Jerry Yang, it comes down to pride and not money. Yang has made it through the dot-com bust, it’s failure in challenging EBay Inc. in the online auction business, and it’s challenge to Google in web searches.

I understand that Yang wants to keep his pride, but what about his employees.

In an e-mail to his 14,000 employees last week, Yang said Yahoo was weighing its options. Analysts including Gartner Inc.’s Andrew Frank in New York said alternatives like linking up with Google or News Corp. won’t work. Investors like Firsthand Capital Management’s Kevin Landis said Microsoft made a “fair offer.”

Yahoo’s share of the U.S. search market fell to 18 percent in December from 24 percent a year earlier, according to New York-based Nielsen Online. Yang took over as chief executive officer in June, aiming to reclaim the company’s dominance on the Internet.

Is there any way Yahoo can come back into the fight?

While Yang will have difficulty letting go, selling to Microsoft may be his best option, said former Yahoo Executive Yen Lee.

“It’s pretty hard to imagine a better exit for Yahoo than Microsoft,” said Lee, president of the travel site Kango in Palo Alto, California. “It may be more painful for him to do what is necessary to turn the company around than to sell the business.”

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I like the 19th century structures found in the Rittenhouse Square area, on the southwest side of Center City. The row houses in Italian Renaissance Revival, Georgian Revival and Beaux-Arts styles are beautiful, but I absolutely adore the fine Victorian houses by Wilson Eyre.

Along with my adoration of Philadelphia architecture, I have come to admire and appreciate a well-known man of the Rittenhouse Square area, Mr. Wayne Spilove.

Mr. Spilove has dedicated many years of his life to preserving Philadelphia history, and I commend him.

One of my favorite places to visit is the Reading Terminal Market, and without Wayne Spilove the market would not be there today. In the late 1980’s the Reading Terminal Market was threatened with demolition, but under the leadership and care of Mr. Spilove, the market was redesigned and restored to it original inveiglement.

Today, the Reading Terminal Market is home to more than 80 merchants, one hundred thousand Philadelphians and many tourists who pass through the market every week enjoying its exceptional products, history, and people.

I use this hot wrist wrap daily after performing my wrist and hand exercises. After using the wrap for just a week I have less pain in my hands and overall have more flexibility in my wrist and fingers.

I am upset that my therapist never suggested something like this. He continued to take my money, and explained to me that regular visits to his office were the only option I had to treat my pain. What my therapist did was unethical. There are many alternative solutions that are less costly and also more adaptable to my lifestyle. I no longer spend an hour or longer a month on doctors visits, and I have also found that I am more productive at work. I have found pain management for my injuries, and I hope that you can too.

1.Were Marianne Stanley and George Raveling doing work of comparable value?

Yes, I do believe that Marianne and George were doing work of the same comparable value. Both coaches were coaching the same amount of games each season, and both were doing a great job.

2.Was Stanley treated unfairly or in some way discriminated against? Should USC have offered to pay her more?

I do believe that Stanley was treated unfairly or in some way discriminated. She was doing the same job, and had plenty of experience, yet she was being paid less than half of what Raveling was making. The USC should have offered her a package comparable to that of Raveling, it would have been the right thing to do.

3.Why do sports played by men tend to be more popular and generate more revenue than sports played by women? Are female athletes—and their coaches—disadvantaged? Are they discriminated against? If so, who is responsible for this discrimination, and do colleges and universities have an obligation to do something about it?

I really do not follow sports too closely, so I am not quite sure why one would generate more revenue than the other would. I understand that men watch men’s college sports more than women’s sports, but I think it might be partly due to the media attention that is given to one over the other. I know when I listen to the news, men’s sports scores are noted, but I do not recall hearing anything about women’s sports. Therefore, the teams’ PR staff needs to get better coverage and attention to the women’s games.

Disadvantaged how? I think it is a disadvantage that they do not get the attention they deserve, but steps can be taken to change this. Are they discriminated at every university? I would say no, but at some such as USC, yes they are. There is not just one person that is responsible for the discrimination, it stems back over time. While women are supposed to have “equal” rights, I do not always feel that this is the case. Some people are stuck in the past, and have this mentality in their head that men are better, which is definitely not the case. I think that this discrimination will continue until this stereotype no longer exists. Universities and colleges have been established to educate, so I think they should do just that to resolve the issues of discrimination.

4.Should universities like USC base their coaching salaries entirely on market considerations? Or should they pay the coaches of men’s and women’s sports comparable salaries based on experience, skill, and performance?

I believe that the coaches’ salary should be based on experience, skill, and performance. If the women’s team coach is doing much better than the men’s team coach, then I think there is nothing wrong with the women’s team coach being paid more. It is only fair.
5.Respond to the argument that because men are free to coach women’s teams and women to coach men’s teams, there is nothing discriminatory in the fact that one job pays more than the other.

It is only discriminatory if both teams are equally ranked, have good coaches and one coach is being paid more than double that of the other. It is fine to have one job pay more than the other is there is variables that back up the increase in salary, such as experience, skill, and performance.

6.Was Sharrona Alexander’s pregnancy likely to have adversely affected her coaching performance? If so, was Marianne Stanley wrong to ask her to resign? How should Stanley have handled the situation?

I do not believe that Alexander’s pregnancy would have had an adverse affect on her coaching performance. As the book noted, it may help her positively in her coaching career. Yes, Stanley was wrong to ask Alexander to resign. Stanley should have sat down with Alexander and ask her how she was doing with the pregnancy, how long into the pregnancy did she planned to coach, and how much of a leave would she need after the child was born. This way Stanley could plan a strategy for the season if another assistant would be needed, or maybe Alexander’s pregnancy might not affect the season at all. Resignation was not the proper way to handle this situation, and Stanley should know this after everything she has been through over the years.

With all this in mind, I often find myself analyzing the customer service I receive from businesses that I patronize.

Last week I had my first visit at the orthodontist. I received my consultation, met the wonderful staff, and was familiarized with the office.

I decided to visit this orthodontist because he offered Damon braces in the Lehigh Valley for adult patients, but I have chosen him as my orthodontist for many reasons:

• office etiquette
• fun & friendly environment
• quality care
• experienced staff
• patient-centric approach
• advance braces technology
• state-of-the-art office

All of these add up to a high quality of customer service.

My orthodontist and I have the same end goal…to create a beautiful happy smile for me.

A lot of this has been brought about by the death of runway model, Ana Carolina Reston, who died in late 2006 from complications of anorexia nervosa.

Kate Ford, the chief executive officer of Ford Models, doesn’t buy into the idea that fashion models are creating a cult of thinness in the USA. Kate believes, “The biggest problem in America is obesity. Both obesity and anorexia stem from numerous issues, and it would be impossible to attribute either to entertainment, be it film, TV or magazines.” She says, “Societies throughout the ages have had different ideals for female beauty.”

Hey Kate, do you think that societies ideals for female beauty have changed as the images of female beauty on film, TV and in magazines have changed. In the 1950’s the alluring beauty, Marilyn Monroe, with her voluptuous curves and a generous pout was considered a sex goddess. Now young women open magazines, or turn on the TV to see an anorexic-looking Angelina Jolie, Christina Ricci, Mary Kate Olsen, Nicole Richie, Ashlee Simpson…the list goes on. For God’s sake, there are even Pro-anorexia sites out there.

Kelly Cutrone, owner of People’s Revolution, a company that produces fashion shows around the world say that women shouldn’t be comparing themselves with these girls (runway models). “These girls are anomalies of nature. They are freaks of nature. They are not average. They are naturally thin and have incredibly long legs compared to the rest of their body. Their eyes are wide set apart. Their cheekbones are high.”

Kelly’s justification for using thin girls:

“If we get a girl who is bigger than a 4, she is not going to fit the clothes,” Cutrone says. “Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better.”

Hey Kelly, are they naturally thin, or do they have eating disorders? People like you have this ( “Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better.”) burned into these girls heads.

I personally believe there is a difference between being thin and healthy vs. a person starving themselves to be thin. If anything, the people who host these fashions shows, and the agents of these models should do their best to promote healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. Of course these young women have free will, but if they naturally do not have the body to be a model without starving themselves to death, no matter how good they are, please help them to realize this about themselves.

Let the world not lose another talented young women to this horrible disease.

R.I.P.

Ana Carolina Reston
Karen Carpenter
Christy Henrich
And…all the other men and women whose lives were taken away by anorexia