4Thought Blog

The novel Coronavirus is changing the business landscape at lightning speed.

While governments continue to work to blunt the negative impacts, there is already one new provision designed to help employers assist workers needing to take leave for either health or family care reasons.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, signed into law last week, allows small and midsized employers to use two new refundable payroll tax credits aimed at immediately reimbursing them, dollar for dollar, for the cost of providing Coronavirus-related leave to their employees.

The new law also mandates paid leave benefits for small business employees affected by the COVID-19 emergency. Learn some details on the new law below.

The federal tax deadline has been extended from April 15 to July 15 due to the Coronavirus pandemic, officials announced Friday.

The White House had announced previously they were deferring tax payments for 90 days, but that Americans would still need to file by April 15. Now, the filing deadline will be extended into the summer, as well.

Many people are familiar with tax credits for individual taxpayers, such as the credits for higher education expenses or the child tax credit.

But businesses and business owners also may be eligible for some valuable credits that can lower their tax bills.

Here are seven credits for small business owners to consider this tax year and beyond.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanently eliminated deductions for most business-related entertainment expenses paid or incurred after 2017. For example, you can no longer deduct 50% of the cost of taking clients out for a round of golf.

Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect, owners of pass-through entities have been allowed to deduct up to 20% of their qualified business income. However, the benefits may be reduced or eliminated if an owner's taxable income exceeds certain thresholds.

If you exceed the thresholds, one potential strategy is to transfer portions of your business to multiple trusts for the benefit of your children or other heirs. But there's a possible wrench in the works — regulations prevent the use of multiple trusts as a tax avoidance device.

If you have a very profitable sole proprietorship, partnership, S corporation or LLC, read on to learn how you can still enjoy the valuable tax advantages of the qualified business income deduction.

We’re already one month through 2020, but there’s still plenty of time to make changes to affect your personal and business taxes for the year. Actually, there’s still even time to make some changes to save on your 2019 taxes.

Read on for some of our biggest tax insights for 2020, including retirement changes under the new SECURE Act and the continuation of tax savings for small business owners through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

New Jersey has enacted a so-called SALT – State and Local Tax – cap workaround to help pass-through businesses in the state.

The Pass-Through Business Alternative Income Tax Act allows a refundable gross income tax credit for taxpayers earning income from pass-through businesses.

It’s intended to help the state’s small businesses hurt by the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions that is part of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

It's unclear how long today's taxpayer-friendly rate environment will last. C corporation shareholders may want to hedge their bets by taking proactive measures to minimize the overall tax hit on corporate income.

Here's a possible strategy that may allow owners to cash out corporate wealth at a relative low tax cost, while providing several other long-term tax benefits.

There’s good news for rental real estate owners regarding the fruitful Qualified Business Income Deduction.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act introduced a new deduction for individuals, estates and trusts that own interests in so-called "pass-through" business entities for 2018 through 2025. The deduction can equal up to 20% of an owner's share of qualified business income from an interest in one or more pass-through business entities. The QBI deduction is subject to limitations for higher-income owners, but it can be an important tax-saving break for many small business owners.

The eligibility rules for this deduction have been a source of confusion. Only income from a "business" counts as QBI — but the term "business" isn't defined in the statutory language that created the QBI deduction. So, there was a question about whether a rental real estate venture could be classified as a business for QBI deduction eligibility purposes.

Just in time to avoid a government shutdown, the federal government last week approved new spending bills that extend and change some important tax benefits for both businesses and individuals.

Here’s a look at some of the key changes from the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020. These will go into effect right around the two year anniversary of the passage of the sweeping Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017.