Business and Finance

4 Things to Know Before Incorporating a Business Incorporating a business is an important decision that will significantly impact your life in the present and future. It is a critical decision, and you need to consider several factors before moving forward with it. But that's no reason to take the stress!  Here...

Employers with 5+ employees must offer a retirement program or face fines Employers may not realize that we’re inching up on the final registration deadline for the CalSavers mandate that will impact every business with five or more employees. What many small business owners still don’t know about CalSavers CalSavers (Senate Bill 1234)...

While Covid has disrupted our lives in ways that few emergencies have before, it has also cleared the way for an economic boom and social revival. The New York Times’ David Brooks is calling it the “American Renaissance”. Brooks describes how West Germany and Japan endured widespread devastation during World War...

There’s a new scam in town, and they're waiting for Elon Musk Scammers are now preying on those who have been investing in the Cryptocurrency market. Crypto’s been a wild ride, with a huge surge in prices, then a plunge. The most important feature of Cryptocurrency is that it is not...

We all thought the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a done deal—that’s how naive we were. Proposed nearly a century ago, the ERA is periodically propelled forward. Some of us remember the National Organization for Women (NOW) passionately advocating for the ERA's passage in the 70s. But the clock ran...

Jane Matthews built a successful business as a video and movie script writer while homeschooling her nine-year-old autistic daughter and shuttling her 15-year-old son to his accelerated science classes at the local college. Her husband’s sales job means that he travels frequently and is unavailable for day-to-day help with the...

I just read about a taxpayer (in this case, we’re using the term loosely), whom we’ll call Victor. He has a good job, has raised three kids and put them all through college. He saves for retirement. His taxes are regularly withheld from his paycheck, so there are probably no...

California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB-5) took effect on January 1, 2020. The bill is an effort to curtail the hiring of independent contractors that leaves many workers without the stability that comes with employee status—healthcare benefits, a retirement account and accrued vacation time. AB-5 is an effort to force companies to...

What has the IRS cooked up for us this year? I was reviewing some of the tax changes for 2020, and it seems like the big changes came last year as part of the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. What did get my attention were some cautionary items...

California has passed legislation that could help hundreds of thousands of independent contractors become employees. It would provide the opportunity to earn a minimum wage, overtime pay and other benefits. Yet this legislation is highly controversial. Uber, for one, doesn’t think the law’s provisions apply to its drivers. They’re just...

Peter Rothstein likes that his job has a social purpose. It expands clean energy to mitigate climate change. Best of all, he will soon be able to support that mission in his retirement plan. Socially conscious investing is gaining ground. Identifying 401k offerings that support environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors The...

The government is responding to statistics showing that current generations are not saving for retirement. Unlike their thrifty parents, many baby boomers are alarmingly ill-prepared for retirement. Many other employees are more focused on present financial needs than future ones. The implications of generations of people who are unable to...