The Business Owner Blog

Do you still give your employees an automatic annual pay raise? Or feel that you should?

Automatic raises? Not so smart.

Are your health insurance costs rising? Claim your tax credit for 2010 health insurance premiums paid for your employees. Go to www.IRS.gov to obtain form 8941, Credit for Small Employer Health Insurance Premiums. It has instructions, but Notice 2010-82 provides a more detailed explanation designed to help small employers correctly figure and claim the credit.

I’m sick and tired of people talking about taxes. Our federal, state and local governments must raise enough money from taxes to pay for their expenditures, or they’ll default on payments to people like you and me. So if we want lower taxes — and we all do — we need lower government expenditures.

We’re all shocked by the current federal budget deficit, but any economist will tell you that a budget deficit is normal, even functional, during times of war and economic recession. The real crime of federal economic irresponsibility is that we ran federal deficits during the 30-year period prior to Obama’s election. That we spent more than we brought in and failed to “save for a rainy day” during the incredible stretch of peace and economic prosperity during the 80s, 90s and 2000s.

The U.S. Senate will be back in session starting Monday September 13 and the Small Business Lending Act is scheduled to come up for a vote next week.
The enhanced SBA loan program enacted February 2009 provided a much-needed lifeline to scores of Oklahoma businesses. The economy is weak and it’s too early to allow meaningful economic support initiatives such as this to expire. The enhanced SBA program was designed to help businesses survive the recession and for many businesses, it’s not over.

You knew him. He was the talk of the town. Spent a fortune. Had everything. Then, suddenly, busted. Bankrupt.

Everyone was shocked.

The Chief Executive of British Petroleum (BP) will be fired within the week. This was reported yesterday by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and corroborated by various sources.

And so, once again, we see large and successful organizations – when things go wrong – make a change. Send a message. Roll some heads. Can we learn from them as owners of small and mid-size companies?

What can we read into the stock market dive of late?
It’s just a sign things are getting back to normal.
According to the Richard Cripps, Chief Investment Officer at Stifel Nicolaus. “There have been ninety-two corrections of ten percent or more since 1928, or one every eleven months.” In April he said a 10% correct as likely to soon occur, based on historical precedence. “We are due,” Cripps said.
And it did.

“Things Every Business Seller Should Know” was the title of a presentation given Tuesday by David Perkins, Managing Editor of The Business Owner Journal. He accepted the invitation extended to him by Dennis Currington to speak to the volunteer counselors of Tulsa SCORE.

Tulsa SCORE is an affiliate of the Service Corps of Retire Executives (SCORE) headquartered in Herndon, Virginia and Washington, DC. The organization’s mission is “educating entrepreneurs and helping small business start, grow and succeed nationwide.” Among the topics covered were:

With the advent of websites, blogs, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, the real you is rapidly and widely disseminated. What people really think about your company today tends to have as much—if not more—to do with how you and your employees conduct themselves as it does with the image you work hard to portray.