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Marti DenUyl

About Marti DenUyl

Posts by Marti DenUyl:

Understanding Equity on the Corporate Balance Sheet

Your favorite number on the balance sheet might just be Cash. It’s easy to understand and something every business has. But there is a more meaningful number, at least in the long-term sense, and that’s equity. Let’s dive deeper into that part of the balance sheet. 

The Equity Section

As a reminder, the balance sheet has three major sections: assets, liabilities, and equity. When it comes to equity, the accounts that are displayed are dependent on the type of entity of your business. Your business could be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a corporation, or something else. In this article, let’s focus on equity in a corporation. 

Every corporation should have at least three equity accounts. 

  1. Stock

This account should reflect the amount of stock issued by the corporation. The amount and price of each share is usually spelled out in the Articles of Incorporation, the initial legal document of the corporation. For example, if the amount of shares the corporation can issue is 100,000, and they have a par value of $.01, then your stock account balance should be $1,000, which was paid in by cash by the corporation’s owner(s).

This account might also be named Capital Stock, Common Stock, or something similar. This account’s balance typically doesn’t change much over time for a small business. It’s only when new stock is purchased (issued), sold, retired or repurchased (by the corporation) that the account will see changes.  

  1. Additional Paid in Capital (APIC)

Additional Paid in Capital occurs when investors and business owners pay in more than the par value price of stock. The balance represents the difference between what owners/investors paid into the company and the par value of the company stock. 

  1. Retained Earnings

Retained Earnings is where the action is and is an important number to understand. It’s the accumulated earnings of the company less any dividends paid to shareholders.

For a small business, retained earnings will change once a year at the end of the fiscal year when net profit (or loss) from the current year is rolled into the retained earnings account. At this time, all of the income and expense accounts are zeroed out to start over for the new year, and the balance (which is profit or loss) is added (or subtracted, in the case of loss) to retained earnings. Your accounting system automatically does this for you, and you can check it out by running a balance sheet as of the last day of your fiscal year, then running a balance sheet on the following day – the first day on the next fiscal year and comparing what changed.  

You can reconcile retained earnings by adding up all of your profits and losses for each year you are in business. Then subtract any dividends paid throughout the years, and you should come out with your retained earnings balance. You can have a negative retained earnings balance.

The retained earnings number is a measure of the long-term value of the business. It also plays a large role in determining your basis, or investment, so to speak, in the company, which is used for tax purposes.     

An S Corporation will have an additional fourth account in its Equity section.

  1. Distributions

Distributions represent the money that the S Corporation owner has taken out of the business. This money is over and above the salary that is paid to the owner. It must be tracked for tax purposes, which is why it has a separate account on the balance sheet.  In simple terms, distributions are generally not taxable as long as the owner has enough basis to cover them. In this way, distributions are different from dividends that are issued in C Corporations, since they are taxable.

Last, if you run a balance sheet report in your accounting system on any date during the year, you may see an additional account:

  1. Current Year Earnings

This is the sum of all of your income and expense accounts. It should be the same number as net profit or loss on your income statement from the beginning of the year to your balance sheet date. On a formal balance sheet for external purposes, this number is rolled into the retained earnings account.

The equity section can be the most difficult section to understand on the balance sheet. Hopefully, the explanation above will provide a bit more clarity as well as shine a light on the significance of the retained earnings balance. 

Rumors About the IRS

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The IRS has been in the news recently, and there are several rumors floating around on social media that we’d like to set straight. It’s simply NOT true that 87,000 IRS agents with guns will be coming after you any time soon!

Here are the real facts. The Inflation Reduction Act signed by the President on August 16, 2022 appropriates an additional $80 billion to the IRS for a period of 10 years, beginning October 1, 2022. The IRS Commissioner has been tasked to come up with a spending plan and has six months to present it.

Some of the money will go to improving technology at the IRS. Currently, when a paper return is filed, it can take months to process, so there will be improvements to make in that area as well as several other system improvements.  Another area that needs more budget is customer service. Less than one-fifth of all phone calls in 2021 were answered, causing response delays and daily headaches for tax professionals as well as taxpayers.

$45.6 billion is reserved for civil and criminal enforcement. Overall audit rates are at .12 percent, similar to levels seen during World War II.  That means your chance in 2020 of being audited was 1 out of 833 returns. In other words, very, very low.

The bulk of the hires will be in technology, customer service, and civil enforcement. Letters dated August 2022 from Commissioner Rettig and Treasury Secretary Yellen emphasize that the bulk of the enforcement will be targeted at taxpayers earning the highest income levels.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/commissioners-letter-to-the-senate.pdf

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/JLY-letter-to-Commissioner-Rettig-Signed.pdf

The criminal investigation section of the IRS currently employs about 2,000 agents. And yes, they do carry weapons because they tend to deal with criminals that are armed, such as drug cartel members. Even if this division doubles over the next few years, it means a few thousand hires, not 87,000 as reported on social media.

The hiring market for accountants is currently very tight. Many CPA firms are challenged to fill open positions. With additional retirements occurring over the next few years, the IRS will face the same issues with building, onboarding, and training their new staff of accounting, tax, and audit specialists. Simply, put, it could take longer than planned to make an impact that will be felt at the taxpayer level.

Most tax professionals and some taxpayers have been heavily impacted by the IRS’s poor customer service. The hope is that the additional funds will focus on providing taxpayers with faster answers and faster refunds in the future, most likely starting in 2024 and beyond.  Faster answers and refunds are simply not as exciting as 87,000 agents with guns, which is likely why it didn’t make the news cycle.

Cool Tech Tools: ClickUp

ClickUp™ is a versatile new web application that serves multiple functions for a small business. It’s primarily a CRM – customer relationship management – with project management and workflow features built in, and is adaptable across several industries.  

 

ClickUp’s goal for its users is to save time and reduce redundancy by tying everything together in one app. Its integrations, which are called ClickApps, are truly its strength. The 1,000+ integrations set ClickUp apart from other offerings, and for this reason, ClickUp excels at automating processes that use multiple apps, including hard-to-automate processes like customer onboarding.

 

Some of the items people use ClickUp for include reminders, goals, whiteboards, templates, calendars, document flow, task management, dashboards, marketing processes, and team collaboration and communication.

 

One of the features that is frequently mentioned is the ability to create custom views exactly the way you want them. Views provide a summary of your work and come in many flavors. You can create task views, list views, boards, calendars, Gantt views, workload views, and box views.  

 

If ClickUp has a weakness, it would be its complexity. You really need to be somewhat tech-savvy to get everything set up. The learning curve can be intimidating, but once you get through it, there is so much power in having everything customized and in one platform.

 

ClickUp does have a following of power users, and a certification of sorts is offered. Becoming ClickUp Verified means that you’ve earned expertise in the product. If the learning curve is too much for you or your team members, you can hire one of these ClickUp consultants to do the setup for you.  

 

As of this writing, ClickUp hosts 4,000,000 users, including the ones on the free version that is for personal use. Monthly pricing for business users ranges from $5 to $19 per user, depending on the features you need. Enterprise options are also available. 

 

ClickUp was founded in 2017, is headquartered in San Diego, CA, and has raised three rounds of funding as of this writing. You can find out more at clickup.com.     

      

When Your Remote Employee Lives and Works in Another State

Remote working has exploded in the last few years, especially in professional services. Now that companies are seeing the benefits of remote working, they are also seeing the benefits of an expanded pool of potential employees. Some firms are hiring employees that live several states away from where the office is located, which comes with quite a few ramifications for the business. 

Let’s say your business is based in Texas. You already file quarterly payroll reports and pay federal payroll taxes for your Texas-based employees. You also already file all the required state payroll reports and have Texas workers compensation. In May, you hired an employee that lives in Cleveland, OH. And in June, you hired an employee that lives in San Francisco, CA. You’ll need to get set up to pay employees in each of these states:

  • You may need to get set up as a Foreign Corporation in these states (the exact paperwork depends on your type of entity as well as the state’s requirements and where your business originates). This means filing legal paperwork as well as complying with annual tax filings and statements of information. You may also need to hire a firm who can be your registered agent and legal contact in that state.
  • You must get workers compensation in those two states.
  • You must sign up with the unemployment agency in those states. For California, it’s the EDD (Employee Development Department), and for Ohio, it’s the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
  • You’ll need to work with your payroll provider to give them your account numbers so they can accurately create the paychecks with the appropriate state withholdings.

We’re not quite done yet. You’ll need to make sure you file the correct quarterly payroll reports in addition to your federal ones. Continuing our example: in California, this consists of Forms DE-9 and DE-9C, Quarterly Contribution Return and Report of Wages. In Ohio, there are multiple forms: one for SUTA, IT 3, IT 941, and IT 501, all with exacting filing requirements.

Some states that are small and close together may have exceptions that you can follow to save time.

Nexus

Having an employee in another state creates nexus for your organization, which means that you may have additional tax and legal requirements beyond payroll taxes.

  • If you have sales in these states, you may also need to collect and remit sales tax on those sales and file sales tax returns. The first step is to register with the sales tax agency in the state.  
  • As the business owner, you may even need to file a state income tax return and pay state income taxes as an individual, even if you’ve never set foot in that state!

Hiring a remote worker is so easy, but the paperwork that comes after it is anything but easy. Make sure you stay in compliance with all the tax and legal requirements of hiring an out-of-state worker. There can be some lead time in getting all this set up, so be sure to plan for this prior to your new employee’s start date.

As always, if you need help with any of these overwhelming tasks, please feel free to reach out to us any time.  

Is Your Best Skill Aligned with Your Business Model?

When starting a business, most entrepreneurs excel at the specific technical skill set they need in order to deliver their services and products to clients.  For example, if you own a bike shop, you are pretty great at all things related to bikes. If you own a law firm, you are probably good at practicing law. This skill is your core skill. 

As your business grows, you need different skills beyond your core skill in order to thrive. That skill depends on the type of business model you want to succeed at. Here are some examples of business models and the key skill you need to be outrageously successful. 

People-Based Business Model = Leadership

If your business is one of the 25 percent of small businesses that have employees and you have a team that serves customers, then you most likely have a people-based business model. The revenue you earn is dependent on how your people perform and serve clients. 

Some examples would be a mid-sized law firm, a nail salon, a marketing agency, and a mid-sized plumbing company. Each one has a team of people that generate revenue.

These people need to be hired, trained, and motivated, and that is where the skill comes in.  If you have a business model like this, you need to excel at leadership, which includes managing people as well as hiring and firing. You need to be great at developing a productive, happy team in order to reach your highest pinnacle of success. Your core skill is still needed, but without leadership skills, you won’t grow as much as you could.  

Acquisition-Based Business Model = Negotiation

Some companies grow through acquisition of other companies. In this case, your top skill should be negotiation; you will need to make excellent deals to keep your business growing.

Project-Based Business Model = Project Management

If your job revolves around delivering large projects, such as construction, possibly IT companies, and some real estate, then your business model might be project-based. While knowing how to be a general contractor might be your core skill, your top skill should become project management.

How well you manage the project timeline, delivery of materials, and management of the right number of people with the right skill at the right time all factors into completing the project as quickly and profitably as you can, with the quality needed so you can move to the next one.  

Volume-Based Business Model = Merchandising 

If moving high quantities of products or services is your business model, then your revenue depends on volume and how much you can sell. Some examples of these types of firms include grocery stores, software companies, some retail stores, and wholesalers.

How you display and market your products will affect how many customers you can get in the door and how fast you can sell. Your top skill should become merchandising and all things marketing.   

 

Your Top Skill Is No Longer Your Core Skill

These four types of business models serve as a sampling to show that once you achieve some level of success, your core skill will no longer be the keystone to further success. Developing skills beyond your core skill will take you farther than you ever imagined you could go with your business.  

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