There’s my two cents, but for the sake of making this post more interesting, let me elaborate.

In BusinessWeek’s Small Biz blog on July 1, John Tozzi explored whether entrepreneurship is on the decline using Scott Shane’s data from the New York Times that it is declining, and Steve King’s data from Small Business Labs that it is not declining.

I am sure both men used reliable sources and logic to reach these conclusions, and both could be arguably correct depending on their data. However, what frightened me the most was that even if entrepreneurship is not declining, it sure doesn’t seem to be on the rise. Here is one of the graphs Steve King uses to support his assertion that entrepreneurship is not declining:

If these measly worms of graph are the best case scenario for the state of entrepreneurship in America, then we have a problem.

Everyone is debating the best way to “fix” the economy; what we need is not repair, but renewal. Trying to claw our way back to the way things used to be duirng more prosperous days is not going to help America into the coming years. What we need is innovation, creativity, and above all, entrepreneurship if we are to continue competing on a global stage. It is my sincere hope that over the next decade, graphs like the one above will show not only stability, but a rise in the rate of entrepreneurship.

So what to give these kinds of Dads for Father’s Day? Give them the gift of time:

1) Regardless of whether you still live with your father, a classic gift is the Nasty Chore Coupon. Pick the chore your dad hates the most: cleaning the gutter? Power-washing the deck? Organizing the garage? Whatever it is, Dad will appreciate you offering to do it for him, saving him time and the psychological burden of a nasty chore. The plus side for you? It’s free!

2) In this day and age, it is perfectly acceptable (nay, even trendy) for men to get in touch with their nurturing feminine side. Try giving Dad a gift certificate for a massage or a pedicure (with clear nail polish!) Hard-working men deserve a little pampering and the opportunity to push the pause button on their busy lives. He may not know how much he loves a trip to the spa until he tries it.

3) And finally (enter shameless but justified plug here), giving Dad a subscription to Shoeboxed is like giving him the gift of time. Mail-in will save him hours of time trying to keep track of all his receipts and business cards, hours that he could be spending with his family. Furthermore, Shoeboxed can give him the peace of mind that all his ducks are in a row for tax season and all his networking opportunities are maximized. It’s like giving Dad a personal secretary! (And one that Mom won’t be jealous of).

Time equals money, and giving Dad some great time-saving gifts could be exactly what he needs for this Father’s Day season.

1) The Key to Success is to be Organized

One time I handed in a crumpled pile of homework to my third grade teacher, who then forced me to write “the key to success is to be organized” over and over again on the blackboard. Though I hated it at the time, the phrase stuck with me and has enabled me to stay on top of my finances, and above all, to save money.

Every year, people lose thousands of dollars through disorganized receipts and poor budget management in general. By subscribing to a service like Shoeboxed.com, consumers can simply mail in their piles of receipts to be scanned and categorized for easy and effective expense management, bookkeeping, tax compliance, budgeting, insurance claims, and expense reports.
 
Shoeboxed does the grunt work so its users can efficiently manage their expenses and safely claim the deductions that they have been missing all of these years, automatically saving them time and money. A little bit of organization goes a long way, especially in this economy.
 
2) Explore the Black Box
 
Any Marketing 101 class will tell you about the Black Box: that mysterious place that occurs between a customer’s exposure to a product and their actual purchase of it. It is within this Black Box that all sorts of psychological factors come into play: does the product trigger a nostalgic memory from your youth? Will the product help you forget about the bad day you just had? Often, consumers aren’t even aware of the underlying psychology that drives them to buy.
 
The more time you take to explore the Black Box, the less likely you are to make unnecessary and impulsive purchases. Thus, follow a 15-second rule: before you are about to make a purchase, pause for 15 seconds to reflect on why you are buying. Do you really need the product, or are you just dazzled by its shiny new package?
 
Take time to indulge in the Black Box, and you will find that spending a little time will keep you from spending a lot of money.
 
3) The Best Things in Life are Free
 
As the Beatles sang, and as every cornball will espouse, the best things in life are free. Well, maybe not the best things, but there are definitely some great things:
 
-Instead of purchasing books and movies, join your local library.
-Check out your community’s website regularly to hear about free events such as concerts, performances, and speakers.
-Sign up for every free customer reward program you can find, and watch the free stuff start to pile up (and if you don’t want to deal with all the annoying junk e-mail, create a separate e-mail account specifically for this purpose that you can scan when you are looking for a deal).
 
These are just a few very basic suggestions, but with some creativity and research, you can often replace expensive activities and products with ones that are not only cheap, but free.

Newly-revised Form 8850, now available on IRS.gov, is used by employers to request certification from their state workforce agency. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted in February, added unemployed veterans returning to civilian life and “disconnected youth” to the list of groups covered by the credit. Though eligible unemployed veterans and disconnected youth who begin work anytime during 2009 or 2010 may qualify a business for the credit, certification by the state workforce agency is required.

In general, an unemployed veteran is a person discharged or released from the military during the five years preceding the hiring date who received unemployment benefits for at least four weeks during the one-year period ending on the hiring date. A “disconnected youth” is a person age 16 to 24 on the hiring date who has not been regularly employed or attending school and who meets other requirements.

The WOTC offers tax savings to businesses that hire workers belonging to any of 12 targeted groups, including unemployed veterans and disconnected youth. The other 10 include people ages 18 to 39 living in designated communities in 43 states and the District of Columbia, Hurricane Katrina employees, recipients of various types of public assistance, and certain veterans, summer youth workers and ex-felons. The instructions for Form 8850 detail the requirements for each of these groups.

The certification requirement applies to all groups of workers except employees who were Hurricane Katrina victims. Normally, a business must file Form 8850 with the state workforce agency within 28 days after the eligible worker begins work. But under a special rule, businesses have until Aug. 17, 2009, to file this form for unemployed veterans and disconnected youth who begin work on or after Jan. 1, 2009 and before July 17, 2009. Notice 2009-28, posted today on IRS.gov, and the instructions for Form 8850 provide details on this special rule.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), enacted in February, created, extended or expanded a variety of business tax deductions and credits. Because some of these changes—the bonus depreciation and increased section 179 deduction, for example—are only available this year, eligible businesses only have a few months to take action and save on their taxes. Here is a quick rundown of some of the key provisions.

Faster Write-Offs for Certain Capital Expenditures

Many small businesses that invest in new property and equipment will be able to write off most or all of these purchases on their 2009 returns. The new law extends through 2009 the special 50 percent depreciation allowance, also known as bonus depreciation, and increased limits on the section 179 deduction, named for the relevant section of the Internal Revenue Code. Normally, businesses recover these capital investments through annual depreciation deductions spread over several years. Both of these provisions encourage these investments by enabling businesses to write them off more quickly.

The bonus depreciation provision generally enables businesses to deduct half the cost of qualifying property in the year it is placed in service.

The section 179 deduction enables small businesses to deduct up to $250,000 of the cost of machinery, equipment, vehicles, furniture and other qualifying property placed in service during 2009. Without the new law, the limit would have dropped to $133,000. The existing $25,000 limit still applies to sport utility vehicles. A special phase-out provision effectively targets the section 179 deduction to small businesses and generally eliminates it for most larger businesses.

Bonus depreciation and the section 179 deduction are claimed on Form 4562. Further details are in the instructions for this form.

Expanded Net Operating Loss Carryback

Many small businesses that had expenses exceeding their incomes for 2008 can choose to carry those losses back for up to five years, instead of the usual two. For small businesses that were profitable in the past but lost money in 2008, this could mean a special tax refund. The option is available for a small business that has no more than an average of $15 million in gross receipts over a three-year period.

This option is still available for most eligible taxpayers, but only for a limited time. A corporation that operates on a calendar-year basis, for example, must file a claim by Sept. 15, 2009. For eligible individuals, the deadline is Oct. 15, 2009.

Eligible individuals should file a claim using Form 1045, and corporations should use Form 1139. Details can be found in the instructions for each of these forms, and answers to frequently-asked questions are posted on IRS.gov.

Exclusion of Gain on the Sale of Certain Small Business Stock

The new law provides an extra incentive for individuals who invest in small businesses. Investors in qualified small business stock can exclude 75 percent of the gain upon sale of the stock. This increased exclusion applies only if the qualified small business stock is acquired after Feb. 17, 2009 and before Jan. 1, 2011, and held for more than five years. For previously-acquired stock, the exclusion rate remains at 50 percent in most cases.

Estimated Tax Requirement Modified

Many individual small business taxpayers may be able to defer, until the end of the year, paying a larger part of their 2009 tax obligations. For 2009, eligible individuals can make quarterly estimated tax payments equal to 90 percent of their 2009 tax or 90 percent of their 2008 tax, whichever is less. Individuals qualify if they received more than half of their gross income from their small businesses in 2008 and meet other requirements. For details, see Publication 505.

COBRA Credit

Employers that provide the 65 percent COBRA premium subsidy under ARRA to eligible former employees claim credit for this subsidy on their quarterly or annual employment tax returns. To help avoid imposing an unnecessary cash-flow burden, affected employers can reduce their employment tax deposits by the amount of the credit. For details, see Form 941. Answers to frequently-asked questions are posted on IRS.gov.

Other ARRA business provisions relate to discharges of certain business indebtedness, the holding period for S corporation built-in gains and acceleration of certain business credits for corporations. Also see Fact Sheet FS-2009-11.

Shoeboxed and Nexonia have integrated to streamline the expense report generation process

Shoeboxed, the leader in online receipt management, scans paper receipts and business cards that users mail in and automatically organizes the receipts so they can be used for taxes, bookkeeping, budgeting, insurance claims, expense reports and invoices. With this new integration with Nexonia, Shoeboxed users can now have Nexonia create their expense reports directly from the receipts they have on Shoeboxed.

“Everybody wants to get reimbursed for their expenses, but nobody wants to spend the time scanning their receipts,” said Taylor Mingos, Shoeboxed’s CEO. “With this partnership, you can mail in a pile of business cards to Shoeboxed, and create professional expense reports on Nexonia without doing any of the hard work yourself.”

“We love the integration with Shoeboxed because our customers not only have their receipts professionally scanned but Shoeboxed goes one step further and gives us the date, amount and vendor automatically. It’s a great improvement in efficiency.” said Neil Wainwright, Nexonia’s CEO.

If you haven’t tried Shoeboxed or Nexonia, you should definitely check out how they can make you and your business more efficient! Also, if you are using one and not the other, this new integration is really a great way to make your expenses process more smooth.

Video Links:
PC: http://www.nexonia.com/videos/nexoniashoeboxed.wmv
Mac: http://www.nexonia.com/videos/nexoniashoeboxed.mov

Shoeboxed Can Shred and Recycle Your Receipts and Business Cards

If we can avoid unnecessary mailings, it keeps our costs low so that we can bring you a better Shoeboxed!

KFC Grilled Chicken FAIL

So when you saturate American media with promises of free chicken, you migh expect that a lot of people are going to take you up on the offer. Apparently, though, KFC was unable to deliver on their promise to give out free chicken to anyone who printed off an online coupon.

Due to “overwhelming response”, KFC ended its free chicken promotion that was supposed to continue over the next few days. Instead, you can redeem you coupon for a raincheck that will let you get free chicken on another day in the future.

No word yet on what Oprah thinks of the “overwhelming response.” She’ll be delivering the commencement address at Duke University this year, and since we’re located just a couple of blocks away, we’ll try to ask her. Think we can get close?

Also, if you’re interested, here is the statement from the KFC president:
We are so sorry, but due to the overwhelming response to our FREE Kentucky Grilled Chicken meal coupon, we can no longer redeem the free coupon at this time. But we will honor our commitment to giving you a free Kentucky Grilled Chicken meal.

Please visit a participating KFC restaurant for a rain check form. Complete the form, attach your original coupon , and give it to the KFC restaurant manager or postmark per the form’s instructions, by May 19, 2009, and we’ll send you a rain check for your free Kentucky Grilled Chicken meal at a later date, plus a free Pepsi with our compliments. Your participating KFC restaurant will provide you with the form you need.

Please note that the redemption periods of the rain checks will vary. All other terms and conditions of the original free Kentucky Grilled Chicken coupon will apply.

Thank you for your understanding,
Roger Eaton

Walmart is exceeding expectations in the recession

“This is the first time in 30 years of consumer surveys that we’ve seen this low interest in shopping,” said Britt Beemer, CEO of America’s Research Group.

The principal reason for low discretionary spending is that 48.5% of consumers feel pressure from credit card bills, the survey said.

The change in consumer behavior also has a philosophical basis, said Beemer.

You might expect discount retailers to attract shoppers in a recession. Makes sense, right?

Well an interesting addition to this recession success is that Walmart reported much higher than expect sales in April. Same-store sales, which are often the most reliable indicators of a store’s health, were up 5% in that month. Well, I guess we’ll see you at Walmart (if we haven’t already).

Shoeboxed Partners With Jigsaw

Now people can use Shoeboxed’s prepaid envelopes to mail in their business cards where they will be scanned and imported to Jigsaw, the world’s largest online business directory. Shoeboxed customers will automatically accrue Jigsaw points that can be redeemed at www.jigsaw.com for business contacts they want but don’t yet have.

Shoeboxed’s by-mail scanning service starts at $9.95 per month, and is available at http://start.shoeboxed.com/Register. The basic Jigsaw service is free.

Companies offering software as a service (SaaS) are relatively new concept, and offer many benefits over traditional out-of-the-box desktop software. I was fortunate enough to talk about this emerging trend with some other representatives of SaaS companies yesterday.

You can read more about it and listen to the segment on Cloud Ave.

The IRS encouraged individuals and businesses to explore whether they are eligible for any of the new energy tax provisions. More information on the wide range of energy items is available on the special Recovery section of IRS.gov. For a larger listing of ARRA’s energy-related tax benefits, see Fact Sheet 2009-10.

Tax Credits for Home Energy Efficiency Improvements Increase

Homeowners can get bigger tax credits for making energy efficiency improvements or installing alternative energy equipment.

The IRS also announced homeowners seeking these tax credits can temporarily rely on existing manufacturer certifications or appropriate Energy Star labels for purchasing qualifying products until updated certification guidelines are announced later this spring.

“These new, expanded credits encourage homeowners to make improvements that will make their homes more energy efficient,” said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. “People can improve their homes and save money over the long run.”

ARRA provides for a uniform credit of 30 percent of the cost of qualifying improvements up to $1,500, such as adding insulation, energy-efficient exterior windows, and energy-efficient heating and air conditioning systems. The new law replaces the old law combination available in 2007 of a 10-percent credit for certain property and a credit equal to cost up to a specified amount for other property.

The new law also raised the limit on the amount that can be claimed for improvements placed in service during 2009 and 2010 to $1,500, instead of the $500 lifetime limit under the old law.

In addition, the new law has increased the energy efficiency standards for building insulation, exterior windows, doors, and skylights, certain central air conditioners, and natural gas, propane or oil water heaters placed in service after Feb. 17, 2009.

IRS guidance issued before the enactment of ARRA will be modified in the near future to reflect the new energy efficiency standards. In the meantime, homeowners may continue to rely on manufacturers’ certifications that were provided under the old guidance and on Energy Star labels for exterior windows and skylights in determining whether property purchased before June 1, 2009, qualifies for the credit. Manufacturers should not continue to provide certifications for property that fails to meet the new standards.

The new law also eliminates the cap on the 30 percent tax credit for alternative energy equipment, such as solar water heaters, geothermal heat pumps and small wind turbines, installed in a home. The cap generally has been eliminated for these improvements beginning in the 2009 tax year. The IRS today issued Notice 2009-41, which explains the effects of this change.

Funding Options for Renewable Energy Power Plants

Business taxpayers who place in service facilities that produce electricity from wind and some other renewable resources can choose one of three options to fund the project: a tax credit based on the amount invested, a tax credit based on the energy produced or a grant.

The flexibility to choose among these options was enacted as part of ARRA.

Taxpayers may opt to claim the energy investment tax credit, which generally provides a 30 percent tax credit for investments in energy projects, instead of the production tax credit, which can provide a credit of up to 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced from renewable sources.

Taxpayers making qualified investments that are placed in service after 2008 and before 2014 (or 2013 for wind facilities) can make an irrevocable election to claim the energy investment tax credit instead of the renewable electricity production tax credit. IRS will issue guidance explaining how to make the election.

Taxpayers also can claim a grant once the property is placed in service instead of claiming either the energy investment tax credit or the renewable energy production tax credit. For qualified renewable energy facilities, the grant is 30 percent of the investment in the facility as long as construction begins in 2009 or 2010 and the property is placed in service before 2014 (2013 for wind facilities). The Treasury Department will issue guidance explaining how the grant works and how to apply.

Taxpayers electing to receive the grant, created by the ARRA, will not be eligible for either of the tax credits.  Proceeds from the grants are not includible in the taxpayer’s gross income, but the grant amount is subject to recapture if the property is disposed of or otherwise ceases to qualify.

Please feel free to submit a design for our new envelopes. If your design is selected, you’ll win the following things:

1. $100 cash
2. 2 months free of Mail-In Classic
3. Fame: Your name and/or design company will be printed on each envelope sent to our users.

Here’s what we would need from you:

1. The envelope design must be for a 9.5 x 12.5 inch envelope. The back side has a flap (printable) that is 2 x 12.5 inches.
2. You may only use white, Shoeboxed blue (Pantone 801 or approx #00aadc) and grayscale / black.
3. Please use one of these two logos on the front of the envelope, preferably in the upper left: White or Blue.
4. Ideally, the back of the envelope will include some text/graphic explanation of the service that Shoeboxed provides: (Send us your receipts / business cards in our prepaid envelopes, we scan them and enter data into your online account, you access them online to stay organized, and we mail you a new envelope for your next batch of documents).
5. Submit final design as an Illustrator .ai file.

ALL SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE ON MONDAY APRIL 27 to sonny@team.shoeboxed.com. The winner will be announced on Wednesday April 29. Have fun and take all of the artistic license you would like!

See our dedicated web page for full details.

1. Taxpayers needing to amend their return use Form 1040X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return.
2. Taxpayers can use Form 1040X to correct previously filed Forms 1040, 1040A or 1040EZ. The 1040X can also be used to correct a return filed electronically.
3. Taxpayers should file an amended return if they discover any of the following items were reported incorrectly: filing status, dependents, total income, deductions or credits.
4. Generally, you do not need to file an amended return for math errors as the IRS will be able to make the correction for you.
5. You also do not usually need to file an amended return because you forgot to include forms – such as W-2s or schedules – when you filed; the IRS normally requests those forms from you.
6. Be sure to enter the year of the return you are amending at the top of Form 1040X. Generally, you must file Form 1040X within three years from the date you filed your original return or within two years from the date you paid the tax, whichever is later.
7. If you are amending more than one tax return, prepare a 1040X for each return and mail them in separate envelopes to the IRS processing center for the area in which you live. The 1040X instructions list the addresses for the centers.
8. If the changes involve another schedule or form, attach it to the 1040X.
9. If you are filing to claim an additional refund, wait until you have received your original refund before filing Form 1040X. You may cash that check while waiting for any additional refund.
10. If you owe additional tax for 2008, you should file Form 1040X and pay the tax as soon as possible to limit interest and penalty charges. Interest is charged on any tax not paid by the due date of the original return, without regard to extensions.