Summary of 2011 Tax Hikes

Where are tax rates going in 2011? If you guessed “up”, you’re absolutely correct. If Congress doesn’t do anything about the Bush tax cuts which are slated to expire in 2011 here’s what happens.

The estate tax, 0% this year, will go to 55% on assets above a million dollars. Now, your estate has already been taxed. You’ve paid income taxes, property taxes, dividend taxes, capital gains taxes and you’re sitting on what’s left over and the government still wants over half of what you own when you die.

George Steinbrenner’s heirs saved $500 million dollars – that’s $500 million they wouldn’t have if George had died 6 months later.

The income tax rates, which Democrats keep insisting are “tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans” will change as follows:

• 10% goes to 15% – If you pay a 10% tax rate you are not one the “wealthiest Americans” and your tax rate is going up 50%!
• 25% goes to 28% – a 12% increase
• 28% goes to 31% – a 10.7% increase
• 33% goes to 36% – a 9% increase
• 35% goes to 39.6% – a 13% increase

Because most small business owners in America pay personal income tax rates on their business profits, this affects your bottom line. And that’s just for starters… Read more.
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Word of Mouth Marketing? Trust But Verify…

Many small businesses don’t advertise at all – they rely on word of mouth advertising. But more and more people are turning to the Internet to verify recommendations from even friends and family.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Where Do Moms Go For Advice Online?) many women get product recommendations from mom bloggers online.

According to  new research from Cone consumers are even turning to the web to investigate product recommendations from family and friends.

Before deciding whether to purchase recommended products or services, more than four-out-of-five consumers (81%) will go online to verify those recommendations, specifically through
researching product/service information (61%), reading user reviews (55%) or searching ratings websites (43%).

Of those who go online to check out a product’s reputation, 77% say that they are more likely to purchase products or services when they can find additional recommendations about them.

And these aren’t just high-cost products, either. While 82% go online to check out cars, 72% will check out recommendations for a movie or a restaurant on the web and the numbers are even higher for the 25-34 age group.

What they find there, either good or bad, highly influences their decision on whether to purchase.

What this means for small business is that, just like the big guys, you need to get your product or service to social networks, bloggers, review sites, etc. prior to a major advertising campaign so potential buyers have someone else’s word for it rather than your own..
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Results of Search Engine Marketing Survey

The results of their yearly Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Survey have just been released by MarketingSherpa with some interesting findings. This year, the SEM field was getting so big that they broke their survey down into two parts, SEO and PPC. This survey report deals with SEO.

In the results of over 2,000 responses  from B2B and B2C marketers, the first thing that hit me was only a third of businesses use a formal SEO process. Almost half use what they call  ‘informal processes’ and 20% have no SEO plan at all!

Also, two twists in modern search engine marketing are ‘personalized’ search (which means different people get different search results depending on their search history) which screws up the metrics of your SEO program, and the advent of social media results showing up on search engine results pages (SERPS). Read more.
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How To Successfully Compete In Your Market

A client asked me a question the other day about competing in a highly competitive market, what she called a “saturated market”. It reminded me of a story I heard while up in Alaska…

Two guys were sitting around a campfire out in the woods when a bear came crashing through the trees. One guy reached out and quickly began putting on his sneakers. The other guy looked at him and said “Are you crazy? You can’t outrun a bear!” The first man responded, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.”

For a small business to compete in a niche market, you don’t have to be the best ever, you just have to be a little better than your competition. That means studying your competition, copy what they are doing right and adding a little more to top them.

There are some handy tools for monitoring your business competitors to see what they are doing. They are also great for initial market research. Read more.
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New Windows XP Vulnerability – How To Fix It

There’s a new vulnerability in Windows XP concerning parts of the Help and Support system. It was found by a Google researcher who posted the flaw just five days after talking with Microsoft about it. Evidently Microsoft wasn’t addressing the issue fast enough for him, raising a bit of a backlash from the community for not giving Microsoft time to respond.

Whatever the case, the exploit is now in the wild and XP machines are vulnerable to drive-by attacks on evil web sites.

It affects Windows XP’s Help and Support functions. Anything using the HCP protocol (hcp:// URI’s) is subject to unauthorized commands.

The easiest way to fix it is to go to Microsoft’s ‘Fix it’ page. You can fix it and, if you don’t like what happens, unfix it from the same site. Pretty cool.

This can also be manually done by following these simple directions:

1. Click Start, and then Run.
2. Enter regedit, and click OK.
3. Expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and then highlight the HCP key.
4. Right-click and Export the ‘Selected Branch’ to be on the safe side.
5. Right-click the HCP key, and then click Delete.

I read that it may cause some problems in your Control Panel, but I’ve tried most of the links and everything seems to be working on my XP computer.

[Editor's Note: This vulnerability was fixed in this month's Windows Update (July 13th), so make sure your computer is set to update Windows automatically or open your IE browser and go to Tools/Windows Update to download the security patch].
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Senate Wants To Grant Emergency Internet Power

Here they go again. For the third time recently the U.S. Senate, this time in the form of Senator ??Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is proposing a bill that would grant the President the power to seize control of or even shut down parts of the Internet in the event of a cybersecurity emergency.

Previous attempts by Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) didn’t get too far. But Lieberman’s new attempt has been endorsed by Rockefeller and co-sponsored by Snowe according to a cnet article.

Now there’s bipartisanship for you… A Democrat, Independent and Republican all wanting more power for the government – power over the private parts of Internet. Read more.
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You Should Want What CEO’s Want

What do CEO’s want?

Simplicity

Dexterity

Customer Intimacy

Creativity

IBM has just completed a study of over 1500 CEO’s (free registration required to read) and other decision makers from around the world with special emphasis on a group IBM calls “standouts”.

Simplicity. I don’t need to tell you how fast things are changing these days. Many people are being overwhelmed by information and technology overload.

A cell phone user manual is now 3 or 4 times the size of the phone. What did someone come up with? A simple-to-use cell phone. That’s all it does. It has oversize numbers. It’s cheap. It sells!

The idea is to simplify things for both you and especially – the customer. Split-test an ad containing two different keywords – learn vs. easy - and see which one has a better response. Read more.
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Obamacare Adds A Flood Of 1099′s

This got my attention. In a column by Deroy Murdoch he explained one of the many consequences of Obamacare. More paperwork for us small business owners.

Specifically, ANY vendor you spend more than $600 a year on will require an IRS form 1099 starting in 2012. Whether it’s a graphics artist or Best Buy, it doesn’t matter.

According to Rep. Dan Lungren (R, Calif.)

They will have additional accounting costs that will consume time and money,” Lungren tells [Murdoch]. “They will be required to keep a running tab with every vendor, all the way from restaurants to anything they buy — a piece of equipment, an airline ticket, or a hotel room. And when they reach the $600 threshold, they will be required to file 1099s for each of those vendors.

What is Home Depot going to do with the million 1099′s it receives from all those contractors out there?

Lungren also points out that small business owners will likely do more business with big box stores rather than local businesses to alleviate the paperwork.

My question is what the hell does this have to do with health care? Now we’re starting to find out what was in those 2600 pages.

You know what else is in there?

Atop this, the Galen Institute’s Grace-Marie Turner reports that Obamacare will require employers to evaluate their health plans’ affordability by calculating each employee’s household income, not just that worker’s individual wages. This likely will involve, at a minimum, collecting income declarations from every staff member.

You’ll also have to find out whether they have an 18-26 year old at home and whether they need health care from your company.

Can the government be a bigger pain in the ass of small businesses?

“YES, WE CAN”.
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