By Debbie Gregory.

Looking for a business grant? Are you a Veteran Owned Small Business? There are quite a few grants out there that are offered by a variety of institutions.   Grants are time sensitive and are open for a specific period and then they are no longer available.  It does not make sense to list grants in this article because by the time you read this article, they may no longer be available.  However, you certainly can find them!

This is a three part series on Business Grants for Veterans and Part 1 will detail a few good places to find grants and other financial assistance for your Veteran Owned Small Business. Please keep in mind that just because you don’t see a specific grant or site listed within this article, there are many other grants that you can locate by performing a comprehensive search with specific criteria that applies to you.  It may take some energy, research and time to locate the right grants and financing options but consider it a treasure hunt that will always be worth it to your Veteran Owned Business.

The best place to begin your search for grants is the Federal Government’s database for small business grants at.Grants.gov. You should check the site often as grant opportunities begin and end frequently. Once you have found a grant (or two) that will work for your needs, you need to determine your next steps.  Grants.gov provides a very clear and specific process for applying for grants.   Below are some specific areas that will assist you on their website:

1. Learn about grants: Their learning page includes a brief instructional video to help guide you.
2. Check eligibility: This page will help you determine whether or not your business is eligible to apply for a federal grant.
3. Search grants: You can search for grants by keyword, opportunity number, as well as other criteria.
4. Register: If you find a grant you would like to apply for you will need to register for an account.
5. Apply for a grant: The apply page includes helpful videos on how to use the system to properly apply for your chosen grant.
6. Track your application: This page gives you the ability to keep an eye on how your application is progressing.

If you are looking specifically for Research and Development (R&D) grants from the Federal Government, there are two other programs that you may wish to consider:

• Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR): This program is focused mainly on technical innovation that specifically has the potential for commercialization.
• Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR): This program is very similar to SBIR but to qualify you need to collaborate with a research institution.

Even though Grants.gov is an outstanding resource to locate grants, the Federal Government is not the only place to look for grants for your Veteran Owned Small Business. Our next article in this series will cover specific state offered business grants that you should explore as well.   Stay tuned!

By Debbie Gregory.

Hiring an intern to help fill short-term work needs, especially during your company’s busy season, is an excellent way to gain some new insight, broaden your work force, and help those people who are new to the field gain valuable hands-on experience.

Internship programs are will provide hungry, capable, new recruits for your business too.  Bringing onboard interns provides your small business opportunities to work with new potential hires without a long-term commitment from either party. If they fit with your company after their internship is over, you can discuss further employment opportunities; if not, you can both move forward with no potential issues.

If You are Considering Hiring Interns:

1.) Treat Interns as If They are Real Team Members:

No one likes to feel as if he or she does not belong. Every intern you take on should be made to feel welcome and as if they are a normal full-time and valued employee of your business. Include your intern(s) in meetings and make sure that they are able to have their opinions and ideas heard.

2.) Pay Interns Fairly:

Internship programs should not be programs to obtain free labor. Unpaid internships with for-profit companies trying to cut corners to save a few dollars are simply unfair to the intern. You want the best that the intern has to offer your company so you cannot expect their services for free. There are a few cases where college credit can be an acceptable form of payment for an intern’s services, but these are generally limited to non-profit organizations or volunteer-focused jobs.

3.)  Offer Other Benefits:

Another way to attract good talent for your internship program is to offer them temporary benefits while they are working with your company. Which benefits to offer will depend on what you currently offer your employees and what makes sense for your industry.

Offer benefits such as:

• Paid days off
• Mentorship opportunities
• A business trip
• Flex scheduling
• Tuition reimbursement
• Remote work opportunities

4.) Recruit from the Right Places:

There are a few good places to find quality interns for almost every industry. Word of mouth is consistently an excellent method to find good people.   You can also get in touch with local career counselors, community colleges, trade schools, and high schools. Don’t forget about the web! Here are a few good online resources for finding interns:

• InternJobs
• Internship Programs
• Net Impact
• YouTern

5.) Put Together a Plan:

Internship programs need to be carefully planned out so that the company and the intern both benefit from the experience. You do not want to hire an intern to simply run for coffee or file paperwork. The intern needs to learn and benefit from the internship.   These are benefits they can carry on to another internship or actual job. You must make your expectations and their job duties very clear from the beginning. Also, there needs to be a designated person in your company to manage the intern’s work.  Keep in mind that if this is a positive experience for your intern, he or she will spread the word and this will help you in securing new interns down the road.

Having a solid plan in place will go a long way to making your internship program valuable to both your company and any intern(s) who join you.  Creating a comfortable environment for them to work in, where they are valued and treated fairly, can learn and prosper will go a long way towards helping your employees and your business grow.

By Debbie Gregory.

In the first part of this article, we discussed smart tax deductions, carryover deductions, changing your business structure, keeping a close eye on your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), as well as tax-free ways to get money out of your business.

This second part will covert five more ways to lower your business taxes including abandoning rather than selling property, accountable plans for your employees, fringe benefits, retirement plans, and smart year-end tax planning.

More Ways to Lower Your Taxes:

6.) Abandon Property Instead of Selling It:

If you own a property that has no value to the business, you may wish to consider abandoning it rather than selling it for a nominal amount. Doing so could allow your business to take a loss on the property, that is fully deductible, rather than treating the loss as a capital loss, which is subject to limitations.

7.) Use Accountable Plans:

Accountable Plans allow you to reimburse your employees for such items as travel, entertainment, tools, or other costs and then deduct the expenses but not report the reimbursements as income to employees. This can potentially save your company money in employment taxes which will overall lower your business taxable income..

8.) Take Advantage of Fringe Benefits:

Paying employees more will increase your costs your business employment tax. However, if the business pays for certain fringe benefits for employees, these taxes can be avoided, which reduces your overall taxable income.

These types of tax-exempt benefits include:

• Educational assistance
• Transportation benefits
• Meals provided for employee convenience
• Health benefits
• Long-term care insurance
• Group term life insurance
• Disability insurance
• Dependent care assistance

9.) Shelter Profits in Retirement Plans:

A 401(k) or a similar tax-deferred retirement plan is easy to setup, you don’t pay taxes on the contributions, and the savings grow on a tax-deferred basis. These types of plans not only allow you to save money on taxes, they help incentivize your employees, and it also shifts most or all of the cost of savings to the employees while giving them choice and flexibility in planning for retirement, instead of a defined benefit pension plan where more of the burdens are on the employer. Employer contributions to an employee retirement plan are also tax deductible and you may qualify for a tax credit for setting up your employee retirement plan in the first place.

10.) Smart Year-End Tax Planning:

Planning for your taxes should be a year-round activity for a business. You can achieve dramatic savings by taking certain actions towards the end of the year including:

• Delaying billing for work done late in the year so that payment will be received in the following year
• Purchase fixed assets and claim a portion of depreciation immediately
• Revalue the assets that are already listed on your books for their depreciation value
• If you have a customer who is not paying, you might be able to write this off as an uncollected debt, also known as a Bad Debt Deduction
• Make sure to have your taxes filed and submitted on time

DISCLAIMER: We have done a lot of research on all of the ways covered in this two part series to bring to your attention that may save taxes for your small business, but we are not professionals.  We strongly recommend that before you take any actions, that you consult your own licensed tax professional. It is always best to seek professional assistance if you have questions about taxes or their implication on your specific business. Working with a professional also provides you better opportunities to find and take advantage of legitimate tax breaks and opportunities to lower the amount of taxes that you pay.

By Debbie Gregory.

Every year tax season comes around filled with the same major questions including:

• How much will I have to pay?
• Why do I have to pay so much?
• How can I reduce my tax liability?

No one wants to pay one dollar more in taxes than necessary.  Finding legitimate ways to lower your taxable income is something that is very important to your business. A lot of business owners end up paying more than they should due to the simple fact that they missed out on certain deductions. However, if you consider that the U.S. tax code is approximately 70,000 pages long, it’s understandable why small business owners have challenges.

Ways to Save Paying Taxes for Small Businesses:

1.) Make Smarter Tax Deduction Choices:

Being strategic about your business expenditures can help lower your taxable income. For example, an established company purchasing a large dollar piece of equipment can deduct the entire cost of acquiring the machinery or equipment. However, a start-up would be better off spreading out the value of the purchases across your future tax years instead of deducting the full purchase price all at once.

Other deductions to consider:

• Vehicle expenses (based on actual costs)
• The IRS mileage allowance(currently 58 cents per mile)
• Home office expenses (based on actual costs), or you can use the IRS simplified rate (which is currently $5.00 per square foot up to 300 square feet of space)
• Claiming disaster losses on prior year returns rather than on the return for the year in which the disaster occurs
• Your business insurance expenses

2.) Carryover Deductions:

Certain deductions and credits have limitations that can prevent you from using them fully in the current year, but carryover the remaining amount to future years. Keep track of any carryovers so that you won’t forget to use them in future years.

Examples of these include:

• Net operating losses (limited to 80% of taxable income)
• Home office deduction
• General business credits
• Capital losses
• Charitable contribution deductions

3.) Change your Business Structure:

If you are currently doing business as a sole proprietor or partnership, it may be time to look at a new business structure. Many small businesses choose to do business as an LLC (Limited Liability Company), or a “pass-through entity”, since it may offer more flexibility on how income can be taxed.

4.) Adjusted Gross Income (AGI):

A number of tax breaks, limitations, and additional taxes are based off of the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), or the Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI), which for some is the same as the AGI. Keep a close eye on taxes taken out of the income, some may not be relevant to your business at all.

5.) Use Tax-Free Ways to Extract Income from Your Business:

Items such as your salary, bonuses, and any distributions of business profits are taxable.   There are other ways that may allow you to possibly benefit from your business’s success without necessarily triggering tax liability.

Items such as:

• Tax-free fringe benefits, including items such items as medical coverage or retirement plans
• Loans made to you by the business on a no or low-interest basis

Please stay tuned for Part 2 of this series with five more ways for small businesses to reduce or save on taxes.

By Debbie Gregory.

Technology drives the ways in which companies operate and is the key to overall operating efficiency. The proper use of technology can also make a small business work and appear to be much larger than it is and this a great equalizer.

Businesses that go out of their way to adopt new technology and those that continuously make smart investments in technology are the ones that end up being more profitable.  They are also better prepared to weather challenges when they come, and they are the leaders in their industries.

Investing in technology, cyber security as well as data privacy are often critical for all types and sizes of businesses.  This does not just apply to healthcare providers, governments, and large corporations. In today’s world, employees, vendors, and customers expect rightfully so tight security as part of their experience working with any type of company.

IT security must be an integral part of all business operations in every sector. Below are a few tips to help keep your personal, business, and customer devices and information safer:

• Cyber security techniques and practices are constantly changing; take the time to keep yourself and your employees up to date with the latest information on cyber security at regular intervals.
• Use strong authentication, requiring more than a simple username and password to access accounts. This is especially important for critical networks to prevent access to stolen or hacked credentials.
• In cases where you must use a traditional account and password combo, make sure that you utilize long, strong, and unique passwords to better harden your accounts against intrusions.
• Never use the same password twice.
• Change your passwords every 90 days.
• Conduct regular backups of all systems. Any system can be restored. In cases of brute force attacks or ransomware, having current backups of all data speeds the recovery process quite a bit.
• Keep your computer’s spyware and antivirus software up to date and make sure that you scan your computers regularly.
• Make sure that your firewalls are always current and up and running.
• Always be wary of emails asking for personal or financial information. Never click on links or open emails that seem suspicious that you do not know.
• Always shred documents that you do not need, don’t just throw them in the trash

Need more help?

Here are a few links that may be worth your time:

• Cyber Security : https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework
• Privacy : https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/privacy-and-security/consumer-privacy
• App Development : https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/app-developers-start-security