Looking for a way to reduce the cost of income tax preparation this year? Then you came to the right place — maybe!
The IRS has launched a new program this year — it’s called “Free File”, and it enables you to prepare and e-file your personal income tax return online for free.
But, alas, there is no free lunch and likewise this “free” program isn’t really free for everyone. You have to meet certain eligibility requirements to take advantage of Free File, so read on!
To obtain more local customers for your business, consider expanding your local business through the Internet. Here are some ways of doing so.
Do you need to start or grow your business but have little money? Before you look to banks and similar sources of financing, why not bootstrap your way to business success?
A bootstrap is a small loop of leather or other material that is found on the top rear or sides of a boot. The purpose of the bootstrap is to help you pull your boot on.
In business, bootstrapping has come to mean helping oneself without seeking outside help. It means using your own resources to finance, promote, and develop your business.
Here, then, are some ways of financing your own business by using your own initiative and depending less on outside bank financing.
As business grows, it can be a good idea to support your eBay sales with a website.
The first step is building a web presence outside of eBay by creating your own website. Building a website is not a difficult task. These days you don’t necessarily need the know-how to do it all yourself – there are plenty of people who will do it for you. Turnkey stores are an option, or you can have a designer create the basic design for a website and then purchase shopping cart software separately.
Either way, you need to think carefully about branding at this point. Branding is recognizable design features that are carried across your entire business from product to business cards, to your website and brochures.
Let me introduce you to another client of mine, let’s call him Tony.
Tony is a computer programmer who always wanted to be “on his own.” One of his co-workers, Kevin, felt the same way. On their lunch breaks they often talked of the day when they’d be calling the shots and making all the money.
Before long, they got the guts to tell their employer they were quitting to start their own business. They didn’t know much about paperwork, but Tony’s brother-in-law, Kyle, who worked for an insurance company, always seemed to know a lot about “how things worked” in the business world.
Kyle told Tony that the business didn’t need to do anything fancy to operate as a business. They could just run things as an informal partnership — they each contributed 50% of the start-up funds and they agreed to share equally in the profits.
The Internet craze has grabbed some mail order dealers so strongly they’ve dropped their street or post office box address and their telephone and fax numbers from their ads. This is wrong! Why? Because: