Lamar Whitman Posts

The White House has renewed its call for legislation intended to stimulate small business job growth. This proposal would provide a 10 percent tax credit for “new payroll” of up to $500,000 beginning in 2013. Incremental payroll of up to $500,000 would qualify for the tax credit, translating into a maximum credit of $50,000 per employer. A similar provision was included in the president’s budget last year and was also picked up in S. 2237; the Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act. That bill fa ...

Following the affirmation of the Affordable Care Act (more commonly known as Obamacare) this summer by the Supreme Court, CompTIA began to see an uptick in interest from its members as to how this law would affect their businesses. Since its controversial passage in March of 2010, ongoing challenges to the constitutionality of the reform measure led many businesses to take a wait-and-see attitude. Now that the law has been upheld, it’s time to take another look at how small businesses might be a ...

While Congress and the Administration concentrate on the upcoming elections, Middle East crises and keeping the government running, expiration of the Bush tax cuts looms as a huge issue for all Americans, especially small businesses.  Currently, business planning is near impossible, as major tax increases could take effect on January 1, 2013.  The potential expiration of these cuts could cause an economic slowdown as consumers and businesses face uncertainty on their 2013 tax bills.  This uncert ...

Legislation has been voted out of the Senate Finance Committee that would extend a number of popular tax provisions, including small business expensing, 100 percent exclusion on gain of small business stock, and the research and experimentation (R&E) tax credit.  The small business expensing provision would allow small businesses to immediately expense many asset purchases on their current-year tax return, as opposed to depreciating the purchase over a period of years.  This accelerates futu ...

Interest is growing in requiring all remote sellers to collect and remit sales taxes for products and services sold from State A to State B.  For a number of years, states have been concerned over the loss of revenue resulting from their inability to enforce payment of use taxes by residents who purchase products and services from an out of state vendor.  The solution around which most are rallying is to require out of state sellers to collect and remit the applicable tax, even if that business ...

The Senate has failed to reach the 60 votes needed to pass S. 2237, Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act.  The final vote was 53-44. This bill would have provided a few small business tax benefits including: A tax credit equal to 10% of the difference in the compensation paid to employees in 2012 over 2011; and The 100% bonus depreciation allowance for business would be extended.During floor consideration of the bill, an amendment offered by Republicans to substitute the House-passed H.R. 9 (s ...

Following the enactment of the JOBS Act on April 5, there has been a lot of interest in the nuts and bolts of crowdfunding.  Does your company qualify?  Does it make economic sense for your needs?  Right now, there are a lot of unanswered questions as the Securities and Exchange Commission is working on the initial draft of regulations to implement this new law.Get ahead of the curve.   Join us for a webinar at 2pm EDT on July 25 titled:  Crowdfunding: Opportunities for the IT Channel and What Y ...

Startup Act 2.0 was recently introduced in both the House and Senate by a bi-partisan group of legislators.  In the Senate, S. 3217, was sponsored by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS).  In the House, companion legislation H.R. 5893 was introduced by Rep. Grimm (R-NY-13) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA-47).This legislation is intended to boost our economic recovery by providing greater support for high-paying, high-skilled jobs in ...

We’ve heard so much about cloud computing, and Dan Shapero, technical marketing executive of ClikCloud and CompTIA board member, is no stranger to the subject. Shapero co-founded ClikCloud in 2011 to offer cloud-based marketing support to small businesses, including website and social media management, email marketing and website analytics.“The cloud has created a frictionless market for us to deliver high value services at an affordable price point,” Shapero said. “Economies of scale afforded b ...

The President recently signed into law the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, which among its provisions would allow for crowdfunding for small businesses. Under the new law, companies can raise up to $1 million during a 12-month period under streamlined Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting requirements.While businesses in high-growth geographic areas, such as Silicon Valley or Cambridge/Kendall Square have exposure to a variety of fast-growth organizations and leaders, th ...