Lamar Whitman Posts

As states seek to maintain or expand both their tax base and collections, we’ve noted increasing and novel attempts to tax interstate transactions.  No less than the U.S. Supreme Court, however, has held that the predicate that for a state to tax a non-resident individual or business, the individual or business must have a real physical presence in the state.  Commonly, physical presence has been interpreted as having an office or place of business in the state, or employing workers that operate ...

President Obama signed the Small Business Lending Bill (HR 5297) into law.  At a total cost of $42 billion, this legislation aims to assist small businesses through both increased access to capital and tax benefits; it also includes an assortment of trade and contracting provisions.  The predominant access to capital provisions are a Small Business Lending Fund, a State Capital Access Program and increased limits for some SBA loans. The $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund (to be administered ...

Each year, businesses are required to provide a Form 1099 to any individual or unincorporated entity to whom that business paid $600 or more for services. Payments for services to corporations are exempted.  This reporting requirement was intended to bring independent contractors into compliance.  Of course the reasoning was that if payments are reported to the IRS, the recipient will be (much) more likely to report those same payments as income.  So, for now, a Form 1099 is required to be filed ...

As the reality of health care reform begins to take shape, small businesses remain pressed by the high cost of health care for their employees, and comparison shopping becomes ever more important.  One of the obstacles in shopping for the best and most affordable coverage has always been the difficulty of comparing plan benefits and pricing; for most, comparing health plans is akin to comparing apples to oranges. In an earlier posting, I noted that the creation of health care insurance ex ...

After incorporation, many small businesses make a federal tax election know as a “subchapter S” election; these businesses are then typically referred to as an “S corporation”.  The benefit of an S corporation election is that the entity can “pass-through” corporate income, losses, deductions and credits to its shareholders. That is, the shareholders pay the applicable federal tax at their individual tax rates; the corporation itself does not pay a tax (except in some situations such as built-in ...

While Health Care Reform legislation was signed into law by President Obama earlier this year, its effect on small businesses is yet to be determined.  In fact, while the legislation has more pages than War and Peace, the regulations that will be drafted in the next few years which will define the details of the reform law will probably be in the neighborhood of 75,000 to 100,000 pages!  It is no wonder that the picture for small business remains murky when the regulatory paper blizz ...

A major challenge for small businesses continues to be lack of access to capital.  While there are signs of improvement, especially as compared to 2008 and 2009, access to capital continues to be a hindrance to growth and innovation.   While TARP bailed out a number of larger financial institutions, it did little to spur small business lending. Credit lines remained stagnant for small businesses.  CompTIA has raised this issue on Capitol Hill and there is growing concern – but little consensus – ...