Employment Taxes are one of business owner’s tax-related responsibilities when they hire employees. If you’re a business owner and have employees, you are responsible for withholding employment taxes from your employees every pay period. Employment taxes, aka, payroll taxes, include income taxes, social security taxes, Medicare taxes, and federal unemployment tax. Some states and local governments may require you to withhold state or local employment taxes.

You must collect a W-4 form from each employee that you hire. Based on the information from this form, you can determine the amount of taxes to deduct from employees’ pay checks. These taxes are usually due quarterly or monthly. At the end of every year, you must issue a W-2 form to each employee to show their gross income and their withholdings. Typically, the term “employment taxes” encompasses these series of tax responsibilities of the business owner when they have employees.

Click here for more information about employment taxes.

If you want to exclude some pages from displaying, use the function ‘wp_list_pages”. The PHP files to call this function can vary depending on your template, but usually they are invoked either in ‘header.php’ or ’sidebar.php’ (’rsidebar.php or ‘lsidebar.php’).

Just specify what pages to include or exclude as in the following examples:

wp_list_pages(’title_li=Pages&include=2,4,6,8′ );

or

wp_list_pages(’title_li=Pages&exclude=2,4,6,8′ );

How to find the page ID

Log in to your WordPress admin interface and go to Manage -> Pages. Click on the page that you want to include or exclude. In the URL bar of the browser, the last part is the page ID.

http://www.mysite.com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=111

For small business owners, every dollar counts. While you work hard to make more profits from the business, your income and self-employment taxes can be still too high for you to afford. Carefully review your tax return and check if you’ve deducted all expenses qualified for deductions. Surprisingly, you may still miss a few.

Here is the list of commonly overlooked business expenses. The list is not intended to be applicable to everyone.

- Advertising & promotional giveaways
These include flyers, catalogs, etc

- Audio, videotapes and DVDs to improve business skills.

- Bank service charges on business accounts
Monthly charges, penalties & fees, check printing and writing fees are deductible.

- Business association dues
I.e., dues for professional associations are deductible Under the Other Expenses category.

- Business gifts
You can deduct up to $25 to any one recipient per year.

- Business-related magazines and books
Books, subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, and other publications can be deducted.

- Casual labor and tips

- Casualty and theft losses
When your business-related property is destroyed or damaged by a natural disaster or theft, you can deduct the losses.

- Coffee, beverage and snack services
These can be deducted under the Office Expense category.

- Commissions
Commissions paid to referrals, salespeople, or companies are deductible.

- Computer software and applications used for business

- Consultant fees
Professional fees paid to accountants, attorneys, or web programmers are deductible. These include administrative costs related to the professional services.

- Costs of entertaining clients

- Credit bureau fees

- Education to enhance business skills

- Interest on business credit cards or loans

- Office supplies
Office supplies used to operate business is deductible. Remember office supplies are different from supplies for your products. Supplies to produce business products are included in costs of goods sold.

- Online computer services related to business
Fees paid to internet service provider can be deducted.

- Parking and meters

- Petty cash funds
A petty cash fund is a small fund of money reserved for incidental expenses, i.e., money used for office supplies.

- Postage, freight, delivery, and post office box charges

- Promotion and publicity

- Repairs of business equipment

- Seminars and trade shows

- Taxi and bus fare

- Telephone line for home business
A separate telephone line for home business is deductible.

- Telephone calls away from the business

When you work from home, you can get benefits from the home office deduction. Some people may think that the home office deduction will significantly increase their chance of being audited by the IRS or it’s very difficult to qualify for the home office deduction guidelines. But as long as you follow the requirements and keep good records of all business-related expenses, you shouldn’t be worried about being audited too much.

Regular and exclusive use
To get the home office deduction, you must regularly use a portion of your home exclusively for your business. The IRS doesn’t specify what “regular use” means, but the guideline is that you must use the space for business on a continuing basis, not occasionally or frequently. You also use that portion of your home “exclusively” for business, which is a more difficult requirement to follow. The space must be used only for business. If you use the space for personal purposes as well as business purposes, you won’t be qualified for the home office deductions.

Here are some practical ways to qualify these requirements:

• Use furniture such as a room divider if you want to deduct a portion of a room for business.
• Get a separate phone line for the business and keep it in your home office.
• Have regular meetings with your clients at your home office and keep logs of the meetings.
• Use your home office address for your business mailing.

Administrative and management work
When your work is mainly performed outside of the home office, i.e. you’re a contractor or gardener, you can still deduct home office as long as you meet these requirements:

• You use the home office for administrative and management activities.
• There is no other fixed location to do such activities.

Amount of the home office deduction
The amount of the deduction should be accurately calculated from the portion of the home office to the whole residence. If your home is 1000 square feet, and your home office is 200 square feet, the portion of your home office is 20% of your entire place, and you can deduct 20% of the money that you spend to maintain your residence.

Main expenses that you can deduct are rent if you rent, or mortgage interest, property taxes and any association fees if you own. You can also claim deductions for utilities, home-owner’s or renter’s insurance, general maintenance or repair fees that affect your home office, etc.

One of the most significant reasons to form Limited Liability Company (LLC) is to get liability protection. As a corporation provides a legal shield against their shareholders’ assets, an LLC offers legal protection for the owner’s or members’ personal assets from business claims or debts. The risk of the LLC owner and members is generally limited to the amount of their investment.

However, when your business is in a trouble such as a lawsuit, the court might go after you and your personal assets, especially if you have a single member LLC and haven’t followed certain rules with your LLC.

Here are some important basic rules to follow when you have a single member LLC:

1. Create separate business banking accounts and credit card accounts. When you open them, use your EIN, not SSN. An EIN is a federal employer ID number issued by the IRS. You can get it fast and easy from the IRS website or over the phone. With the EIN, you don’t have to worry about your SSN passing around among your clients, and your business accounts look more adequate.

2. Fund your limited liability company adequately. Don’t intermingle your LLC funds with your personal transactions. When you receive payments from your customers, make sure payments are made to your company name, not to you.

3. Be clear with books. Keep your personal transactions from the company accounting books. Buy supplies, parts or equipments using your business bank account checks or business credit cards. Not only it differentiate your business from you, but your LLC can also build credit history.

4. Use your company name when you sign any contracts or agreements. Look carefully if it has a provision of personal guarantee.

5. Keep your limited liability company records and documents properly.