The Small Business Tax Help Blog

Archive for December, 2009

You set up a retail business, you advertise in your local newspaper, you get customers coming into your store, and you receive payment at the cash register. Create an online store, and…How do you get customers? How do you receive payment? The concept is the same, but the steps are different.

Step 1: Create your website

If you don’t have web design skills, you can hire a qualified web designer to create a website for you, or you can use an online site builder. Think of it as hiring an architect and an interior decorator compared to setting up shop in an existing store.

Using a web designer

With the services of a web designer, you can have a unique website template and website customized to your specific needs. A web development team can also add features such as Flash headers or any programming needed for your site. If your company image is critical, a custom-designed site that conveys the right professional image is a must.

Using an online site builder

An online site builder is the budget way to go. With site builder programs such as Site Studio, your website can be online within minutes. A step-by-step menu allows you to choose a layout and colors, and then add a site description, a logo, and content. Your template may not be unique, but your content will.

Step 2: Set up an e-commerce store

Your customers will browse at your website, select some items, and then pay for them. When you set up an e-commerce shopping cart, you’re providing a way for your customers to bring their purchases to the cash register. The program you choose will allow you to enter your products in the database and allow shoppers to choose products when they click on “Add to cart” or something similar.

Two well-known shopping carts, osCommerce and Miva Merchant, both allow you to do these tasks:

Add, edit, and delete product categories and other information

Set tax rates and charge tax

Receive payment via numerous online and offline payment processing methods

Bill customers

And much more

osCommerce

osCommerce is an open source program. Store owners can set up their online stores using osCommerce with no costs involved. For small stores, it has all the features you need for an online store. Drawbacks of osCommerce are that customization is not easy, and online stores using osCommerce tend to look similar.

Miva Merchant

While Miva Merchant carries a price tag of $995, some web hosts offer Miva Merchant licenses with their hosting plans. If you choose Miva as your shopping cart, be sure to host your site with a host that provides Miva support. Its learning curve is steep, and it requires the support of people who know how to work with it.

With the price and the steep learning curve, you get more features, and you can customize the program more. Add-in modules can be bought that perform a number of tasks. In addition, a strong support community is available in the Miva user group forums.

Step 3: Get a merchant account and payment gateway

When customers arrive at the checkout counter, you need a way for their payments to be transferred from their credit card accounts to your bank account. The method you choose may depend on your sales volume.

For high-volume sales, an e-commerce merchant account plus a payment gateway will meet your needs. A merchant account provider authorizes the transfer of payments to your account, and a payment gateway transfers the information from your customers’ financial institutions to yours.

Most merchant accounts have setup fees, transaction fees, monthly fees, and statement fees. The transaction fees are less than what you’d pay using a third party credit card processor such as PayPal. With all the fees, however, the overall cost is typically lower only if your monthly sales volume is over about a thousand dollars.

For medium and low volume sales, Pay Quake and PayPal are viable options.

Pay Quake

Pay Quake offers three merchant account types to choose from. Although they all require payment gateways, the two smaller plans have no monthly minimums. You can upgrade to a higher or lower plan if your needs change.

PayPal

PayPal has become a household name. Customers can send payment through PayPal via credit card or via money that they transfer into their PayPal account. While the fees per transaction are higher than with merchant accounts, there is no setup or monthly fees, and you don’t need a payment gateway. You pay only when you have financial transactions.

Fore more details about these options, see Website Source Hosting Solutions: E-Commerce.

Step 4: Create a secure payment environment

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate enables you to receive credit card information securely from your customers. When a payment page is using SSL data to encrypt data, a small image of a lock appears at the bottom right of the screen.

Some web hosts offer SSL certificates as part of their hosting packages. If your web host package doesn’t include SSL certificates, you can purchase one separately.

With PayPal, no SSL certificate is required.

Step 5: Generate traffic

Your products are on display in your newly designed store, your shopping cart is set up and ready to use, and you have everything in place to be able to receive payments securely. Now all you need are customers.

This is where marketing comes in.

Submit your site to search engines.

Advertise your site.

Keep your company name in front of your customers with a regular email newsletter.

Add more content to your website to keep it fresh.

Monitor your website traffic to see where it’s coming from and how you can increase traffic for key content areas.

Canadian small business confidence slipped in December

Confidence amongst small-to-medium-sized businesses slipped in December, indicating the economic recovery remains sluggish in some sectors, a new survey found.

Removing Negative Self Talk – (Home Business Information)

Question: How to use the rebate……?

As you may have heard the Bush Administration said each and every one
of us who work and files a tax return well now get a nice rebate.

If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China.

If we spend it on gasoline it will all go to the Arabs, if we
purchase a computer it will all go to India, if we purchase fruit and
vegetables it will all go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, if we
purchase a good car it will all go to Japan, if we purchase useless
crap it will all go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

We need to keep that money here in America, so the only way to keep
that money here at home is to buy beer, drugs and prostitutes, since
those are the only businesses still in the US that haven’t been outsourced.

Answer: That makes perfect sense.

McGovern--From the Back of a Chevy

He is a strange mixture of Americana. Speaking in a slow, relaxed voice which retains a Dakota twang, George McGovern reflects a traditional homespun, hearthside American culture. At the same time, he is a hard realist about big business and military involvement abroad.

Lewis Black On America

Besides the business idea and its development, running a successful business means careful structuring and detailed planning. Especially in a time of global crisis, the location and the economic and financial environment of the chosen location are critical issues to be considered. Hard times are often a motive power that makes you see the weak points of an enterprise and makes you restructure it in a way to become more effective.

Australia is known with its complex tax system. There are three levels of assessment rules – federal, state and local. Its integration is a subject of discussions at present. At the federal level are imposed the income tax on individuals, the corporation tax on profits, the goods and services tax, the excise taxes, etc. At the state level are imposed payroll taxes, stamp duties on land transfers and other transactions, some taxes on land and properties, fire service taxes, etc. At the local level are imposed some taxes on land and properties.

Just the contrary Singapore is known as a location with business friendly tax regulations.

Some of the advantages of the Singaporean taxation could be outlined as follows:

CORPORATE TAX RATE

Australian corporation tax rate is a flat 30%.

In Singapore, the highest corporate tax rate stands at17%. Annual profits of first 300,000 SGD are taxed roughly at 8.5%.

Additionally, the Singapore tax legislation provides for another scheme of full exemption but only for new companies and only if they meet the following conditions: to be incorporated in Singapore; to be tax residents in Singapore and to have no more than 20 shareholders. In that case the qualifying company is given a full exemption up to 100,000 SGD of its chargeable income for its first three consecutive years of assessment.

TAXABLE INCOME SOURCES

Singaporean resident companies are chargeable to corporation tax on their profits arising from Singapore and on their profits arising from foreign countries when remitted to Singapore. The income earned and retained outside the country is not taxable. Additionally the dividends, the branch profits and the service income are exempt from assessment even when remitted to Singapore when they have been charged in a foreign state in which the certain tax rate is at least 15%. Furthermore, this rule is temporary changed for the year 2009 – for that year it is not necessary to fulfill any conditions in order to be able to apply the exemption.

Australian resident companies pay corporation tax on their worldwide profits, sourced within and outside of Australia. The remittance of the incomes is not a precondition for assessment.

DIVIDENDS

In Singapore the “one – tier” system is applicable. The corporate income is assessed on corporate level and this is final assessment. The dividends are tax exempt and there is no withholding tax with this respect.

In Australia the resident shareholders only receive tax credit when declaring the dividends in their personal tax returns. The credit is for the taxes paid by the company in respect of that part of the profits distributed to the said owners. The non-resident shareholders may not be liable to such credits.

DOUBLE TAX TREATIES

One of the ways of avoiding double taxation is the conclusion of treaties and agreements, regulating the assessment of certain incomes. Singapore has concluded nearly 70 treaties and Australia over 40. There is Double taxation agreement in force between the two countries as well.

GOODS AND SERVCIES TAX (GST)

The Singaporean standard GST rate is 7%, the Australian one – 10 %.

In Singapore a company is obligated to register for the purposes of GST act when the annual turnover is above or expected to be above 1 million SGD. GST registration threshold in Australia is 75,000 AUD.

Both tax systems provide for zero rates with regard to exports, where tax credit is still available.

Imports are taxable supplies in both locations, generally charged with the standard rates.

PROPERTY TAXES

The property taxation system in Singapore is centralized. The basic rate is 10% for industrial, commercial and let-out residential properties and 4% for owner-occupied residential properties. The rate is to be applied to the annual value of the item. The valuation is based on the market appraisal of the land and the estimated rent of other properties.

Australian system for property taxation includes land value taxes, other property taxes on real estates, stamp duties, water rates, etc. The rates and the payment terms differ in each state.

SOCIAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS

In Singapore the employers’ social insurance contributions are made to the Central Provident Fund and depend on the amount of the salaries and wages paid. The rates are between 0% and 14.5%.

The Australian retirement system is called Superannuation Guarantee fund, where employers are required to make compulsory contributions, calculated on the basis of the salaries and wages. At present the rate is 9%.

A payroll tax is also due by Australian employers over the amount of the wages above a certain threshold. Both the rates and the thresholds are appointed by the state governments, e.g. for New South Wales they are as follows: 5.75% where the wages exceed 638,000 AUD. When determining the assessable amount, groups of companies might be treated as one single enterprise if there are related operations.

According to a research published by the Info-communication Development Authority of Singapore, many companies located their business in Singapore over the past years, attracted by the competitive tax environment in addition to geographic advantages, economic and political stability and advanced infrastructure.

Lawmakers oppose tax Measures 66, 67

The amount of money Measures 66 and 67 would raise for the state would be comparatively small compared to the state budget, and would chase businesses and jobs from Oregon, State Rep. Wayne Krieger and Sen. Jeff Kruse told Curry County residents Tuesday. Kruse, R-Roseburg, and Krieger, R-Gold Beach, held town hall meetings in Brookings, Gold Beach and Port Orford Tuesday to discuss the February …

1177-UCC #25-Winston Shrout audio-1099OID process: HOW TO STOP FORCLOSURE !!!

Nine gather at Christ Church to discuss town finances

Telluride faces a choice with lasting impact this November. Four seats are vacant on town council, and with big holes to be patched in the 2010 budget, each of the nine candidates who’ve tossed their hats in the ring say they’ll bring a different kind of experience to bear on town’s problem.

Business Wizard

More Economy Pages

Abstract: Despite decades of repeated failure, President Obama and Congress continue to promote the myth that government can spend its way out of recession.

Self Employment Tax Tips : Tax Tips for Ministers