The election of Joe Biden on November 2, 2020 created one of the great tax-planning stampedes of most practitioners’ lifetimes. Biden had run on a platform of increasing capital gains rates from 20% to 40% on gains more than $1 million. He also planned to reduce the estate and gift tax exclusion from the current level of $11 million+ per… Read More
Current Situation For the last two years, whenever anyone asked me about saving taxes on the sale of a business, I had a stock piece of advice: “Sell before the end of 2020”. We are living in a historically low tax environment in which we are also experiencing record government budget deficits. Even before the pandemic and the multiple trillion-dollar… Read More
In addition to the uncertainties that business owners typically grapple with, 2020 has brought us the pandemic. What are the consequences for business continuity planning? Business continuity planning is particularly important for sole-owner businesses with fewer than one hundred employees. In such a business, if the owner becomes disabled or dies, there is a danger that some employees will fear… Read More
“I never worry about action, only inaction” – Winston Churchill Churchill might very well have been the “un-procrastinator”. Although he was plagued by doubts many times in his career, he never let such doubts interfere with the need to make a decision based upon the best available information. He made his share of mistakes, but he also realized that failure… Read More
Who Needs an Advisory Board? Small businesses – say with less than 100 employees and $20 million in sales – often have trouble managing complex transactions. Large companies have an active Board of Directors from which to receive advice, approve major decisions, and exercise a fiduciary responsibility toward the shareholders. When the CEO of such companies is making an important… Read More
Family-owned businesses are the lifeblood of the US economy so family-owned business succession plans are not a luxury but a necessity. Consider the following: Over 50% of the current working population in the United States works in a small business. (Forbes, September 2013) 57% of small business owners are over the age of 50.(Guidant Financial, 2019) 43% of family business… Read More
You have spent blood, sweat, tears (not to mention time, money and sleepless nights) in building your business and now you are looking to cash out. How can you maximize the value of your business in the eyes of a buyer? Preparation. Make sure you understand the current market conditions in the industry and who are the active buyers. What… Read More
Building a successful business requires planning. Whether the businesses provides products, services, or ideas, it likely took years of refinement, study, and analysis to determine the best business model. A similar effort is required for successful Exit Planning. Exiting But Not Retiring Some business owners don’t have sufficient financial and business resources to retire fully. They might need to continue… Read More
With the New Year upon us, business owners are thinking about goals for the coming year. These will surely include business growth and profitability. One of the longer term goals most commonly shared by owners is to successfully exit their businesses over the next 10 years. Most business owners have a sense of how much longer they want to remain… Read More
1. Can Junior Run the Business? A major problem we encounter here is the failure to adequately consider whether children are capable of managing the business and the related issue of whether children really want to own and manage the business. Frequently, mom and dad simply assume that the children are their natural business heirs and the assumption in the… Read More
