Posts Tagged ‘investor’

Turbo Tax Small Business – A Good Accounting Tax Filing Solution For Small Managers and Owners

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

Operating rental properties and especially a portfolio of rental properties can result in snowballing charges for legal fees and accounting. Managing these costs, supporting your needs the right way, protecting your investors interests, protecting yourself against liabilities is a tremendously challenging requirement that requires understanding where you can “self serve” and how you can accomplish this end while keeping the service quality bar high enough for everyone involved. Turbo Tax Small business is one of these solutions.

Making Turbo Tax sufficient without significant accounting support requires some good planning. First, as I’ve mentioned before a good ledger system that records all transactions before being entered into the property management and accounting system is a great start. If each transaction is recorded with the date, a detailed purpose, and the type. Your books can be quickly assembled by yourself if you have the accounting skills and understand or go to the trouble to understand your software well enough.

With an accurate detailed income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, you have the basic information you require for the financial input of your tax preparation.

Next, you need to have all the entity information at your finger tips. For tax preparation, this includes the tax ID number or EIN for the entity. You need to know your entity type. You have to be prepared to answer questions like whether this is an S Corporation or Limited Liability Company (LLC) or partnership. You need to be able to answer whether the company is a single partner or investor or multiple partner or investor business. Finally, you have to the formation date of the entity.

For the states, you will need to know similar information and states have state specific entity information which you will need to have.

Next, you need to have the investor tax information. This is simply the name of the entity or individual. Their Tax ID number. (If you have foreign investors, you should have a tax id and if you do not their is a process for them to file with IRS to get an ID. You will require their address and a copy of their passport. They will need to complete the W7 for this purpose.) Then you will need the address for each individual.

With all this information in hand, you have everything necessary to complete your taxes. As a matter of organizing, you will need to have the date of investment and subsequent investments for each investor. You will need the same for distributions. Once organized and assuming you have (or the person you have perform the work has) the accounting experience you can prepare an accurate tax return that will satisfy the IRS, your partners, and protect everyone’s interests.

Blake Ratcliff recommends buying The Warrior’s Guide to Rental Investing and Management. Get great investment info here!

Visit http://www.wordclay.com/BookStore/BookStoreBookDetails.aspx?bookid=61268 to buy your copy or you can get the ebook format at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19866

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Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Blake_Dale_Ratcliff

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Bad News – Why The Financial News Media Can Cost You Money!

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

By Scott Matthew Brown

The communication innovations we have around us today like the internet, financial newspapers, and special interest television channels focused on investing like CNBC are a high speed pipeline of nonsensical chatter. All these sources of information mean that there is no shortage of media people trying to answer our questions about the stock market and specific stocks. You have to remember that the news media are constantly competing to survive against other stuff you can watch. If they don’t always sound like they know exactly what is going on then you won’t watch their presentations. If you don’t tune into their show then their ratings go down. If their ratings go down they get fired and their show gets cancelled.

This means that financial journalists are in the business of finding great stories and sounding like authorities no matter what. The stock market is a great place for them to dig up news ‘scoops’ to feed to the public. They don’t really check their facts very well and sometimes not at all. This means that if some insider wants to feed you a line of bull manure then all they have to do is maintain good connections with financial journalists, sponsor an investment show, or outright buy an investing TV channel like Jack Welsh the CEO of GE did when he set up CNBC. What a great way for inside executives to control the flow of news information to the public then to actually own one of the only financial news channels…but not so great for you!

These journalists also kick up the fire by bringing in so-called ‘experts’ to talk about each side of some topic that real experts would not consider important. This just makes it all the more confusing for the public to understand what is important when buying or selling a stock. Shows on CNBC like ‘Closing Bell’, ‘Kudlow & Company’, and ‘Mad Money’ do nothing but confuse and misdirect the attention of most individual investors in the public. Even worse this means that the financial news media allows overpriced stocks to be recommended through analysts in the inside web that inside executives are dumping on the public because they are trying to get out. This actually happened at the top of the bull market in 1999. For a great historical description of what happened read Maggie Mahar’s book entitled “Bull.”

The famous Yale University Economist, Prof. Bob Shiller, Ph.D. is particularly harsh on the media in his book “Irrational Exuberance.” Dr. Shiller is one the economists that Alan Greenspan respects most and where he got the term “Irrational Exuberance.” He portrays the media as sound-bite-driven where superficial opinions are preferred over in-depth analyses. I agree whole heartedly with him and contend that it is also done just because the industry would rather have the retail investor confused and emotionally pliable to get you to buy and sell when they want with total disregard for your best interests!

People who had invested their life savings in the stock market were ripped off in the stock market because the financial news media and analysts were hyping up what a great buy stocks were at the very top of the market in 1999 and 2000. At the same time inside corporate executives were selling out everything they had. What is amazing is that our federal government in the form of the Security Exchange Commission never did a thing about it. There was never an blanket case taken or an outcry that almost all of the inside executives had somehow magically sold out of the market six months before the market crashed.

Here is the valuable tip I want you to consider in this issue of “The Wallet Doctor”: when you are a beginner investor it is important that you DO NOT WATCH THE FINANCIAL NEWS OR READ THE FINANCIAL NEWSPAPERS! Don’t let the stock market industry lead you around by the nose like livestock to the slaughter house. Don’t listen to what they want you to listen to. You should focus on learning what is important in the stock market and the mass media will only confuse you until you have educated yourself. Also, don’t forget that I show you how to focus on what is important to identify stocks that are low priced but unlikely to go lower because the insiders may be buying them up and I show you when to sell when the same insiders are likely dumping the same stocks on the public in my course “The Blue Collar Base Bonanza – What the insiders [definitely] don’t want you to know!” You can get more course information on the course website.

Recommended reading:

1. Mahar, M. Bull! A History of the Boom, 1929-1999 (New York, HarperBusiness , 2003)

2. Shiller, R., Irrational Exhuberance, (New York, Broadway Books, 2000)

I wish you the great abundance in your life you deserve because of what you are and don’t forget that happiness is found only in the precious present moment!

About the Author: Dr. Scott Brown, Ph.D., the Wallet Doctor, is a successful investor. Dr. Brown holds a Ph.D. in finance. The Wallet Doctor is sought after for investment advice and coaching. For more information visit Dr. Brown’s site at http://www.BonanzaBase.com or sign up for his investment tips at http://www.WalletDoctor.com

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