Office of Business Opportunities. Today our topic is preparing your business for year in taxes and financial management tools. My name is Ayesha Driggers. I'm the deputy director at the Office of Business Opportunities and we have our staff when I give opportunity for our director, Miss Melissa Lindler to welcome everyone. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us today. This workshop, you're gonna hear some great information from our presenter this morning. And we're so happy that you made time in your schedule to join us. This is going to be one of many workshops that we will have between now and tax season. But we definitely wanted you to get in the mind frame of thinking about it and making sure you have the proper documents in order your information is right so you can be ready to file your taxes in April. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Melissa. And I also wanna take time to thank all of our veterans that are on the call. If we were in person, we have you all stand up. We appreciate your service for our country and thank you for all that you do and all that you've done. Next, I just wanna briefly go over our program areas in the Office of Business Opportunity and introduce our staff as well. First, we have our commercial lending. We also offer financial assistance to startup and existing businesses for growth expansion and retention and the creation of jobs and assistance and the redevelopment of commercial corridors. We have Brett Whiting on the call. He is our commercial loan officer and he's available if you have any questions about eligibility for those programs that we have in commercial lending. We also have our contractor and supplier diversity program areas where we offer training and support for city initiatives that's designed to increase our local contractor's capacity to compete for government contracts and other procurement opportunities. It's very important to city leadership and our office that our procurement reflects the diversity of our great city. And we do that through our program areas listed on the screen. We also have our technical assistance, education and advocacy where we offer business development assistance and courses for startup and existing businesses that are looking to grow and expand. Some of the topic areas include marketing the use of social media, business plan development, finances, legal issues and much more. We are always looking for opportunities to provide relevant training to our small businesses and that's what we do through this program area. And our contractor and supplier diversity represented on the call. We have Latanya, Germany and also Kalina again yard. Also on our call from our staff we have Tanya Porte de Berry that makes sure everything runs so smoothly in our office. And we have Sandria Robinson on here as well. And Carla Eichelberger is on the call. So all of our staff is available to help assist you who makes you get connected to the right staff member if you have any questions about how we can help you. Our upcoming webinars tomorrow we have our entrepreneurship for creatives with Casey Weiner. We're very excited about this training. We just wanna make sure that our artists our art community know that they are also small business owners. And we wanna make sure they have their resources they need as they continue to grow their business. That's tomorrow at 1130 and we can put the event bright link in the chat for that anyone who is interested in registering for that you can get registered. We are also partnering with SBA for how to prepare for a small business loan with Brett Whiting our OBO loan officer to kind of talk about some of the documents required for a small business interested in applying or lending. And that will be next week. We can also put that event bright link in there as well so you can register. I also wanna take some time to make sure that anyone on the call if you are not signed up for our newsletter if you send us an email and I'll provide our email address in just a moment we'll be happy to add you to our newsletter. It's very important that you get on there. We provide information regarding upcoming webinars as well as any information that we think is helpful for our small business community and it goes out weekly. Here's our contact information for OBO. We are located in downtown Columbia. Our telephone number is<PHONE_NUMBER> or you can email us at obo at columbiasd.gov and we will be happy to speak with you and have a conversation and talk about how our office can help your business get started or grow. Now I would like to introduce the lovely Cheryl Sally with the Benedict College Business Women's Center. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Ayesha. And thank you to the city of Columbia and to our great speaker today for putting this on such an important topic. I'm Cheryl Sally. As Ayesha said, I serve as the director for the Benedict College Women's Business Center. We're funded in part by the US Small Business Administration and we've been operating for a little over a year now. You can advance the slide, Ayesha, thank you. So to just summarize our vision, our purpose, our mission, we want to create a gateway out of poverty for our socially and economically disadvantaged women and our entrepreneurs. And we want to do that by providing the information, education, the tools that they need, the programming to help them to either start or grow and or expand their business and most importantly, leave a legacy for their family and in this community. Next slide, Ayesha. Who do we serve? Startup, startups, those with just an idea and you need to know what the next steps are to get your business up and running, existing businesses, for-profit organizations. Our focus is on women entrepreneurs, but we don't discriminate based on race or agenda. We serve everybody and we serve all industry segments across the South Carolina. Next slide, please. This is just a sample of some of the core and COVID services we provide across the network of business development resource providers here in South Carolina and across the nation with the WBCs, SBDCs and SCORE and so on and so forth and the Veteran Business Opportunity Centers. What you'll find is basic business planning. You got to have that roadmap. You got to know what the steps are from where you are now to where you want to be in five years, 50 years, so on and so forth. So business planning, writing that vision down and knowing what the steps are and doing the research. So we provide that service, resiliency and recovery. How do you pivot your business? Financial planning and strategies, access to capital, helping you do the loan applications and position yourself and your business to get the funding that you need to either start or grow, government contracting, marketing, so on and so forth. This is just a snapshot of who we've served up over the past year through September. Next slide, Ayesha. Some of the upcoming workshops that we'll be doing in the next several months. Legal, all about your legal services through Next and Pruitt Law Firm. They provide services to our clients at no cost but we want to bring that programming to you as well. Bankable relationships, how to do that and yours truly that you have today, she'll also be doing some more, I think as Melissa said, some more workshops all about your financial systems, your taxes, accounting, bookkeeping, quick books, so on and so forth. Business licensing, what are the legal requirements for making sure that you're doing business the right way with the city, the municipalities and the county and in the state of South Carolina. And last but not least, with our funding partner, the Small Business Administration, we were successful last year doing the programming and doing the government contracting and certification. So we're gonna repeat that. We're gonna repeat those things that worked out really well and add some new things to it. Next slide. This is just a little bit about some, matter of fact, it's a $200,000 resilience and recovery demonstration grant that we were awarded. And that is to really reach our creatives, which Casey White, Dr. Casey Whitner will be doing a workshop tomorrow, but she will also be helping us with the creative entrepreneur programming. So making sure that those who, they have a passion for singing or performing a visual arts, but we also want them to know about business, packaging that into a business model and making sure we reach rural South Carolina that they know about the resources that are available. Next slide. And that's it. I don't wanna take a whole lot of time because we have some great information coming from Sheila Tupwila Dawkins, but please reach out to us, get connected with us, get on our list so we can keep you informed about all the things that we're doing at the Women's Business Center. Thank you so much. Thank you Cheryl. Now I would like to introduce Angela Brewer with the U.S. Small Business Administration. Good morning everyone. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this very nice presentation at Ayesha in the city of Columbia. As stated, my name is Angela Brewer. I'm a business opportunity, especially with the South Carolina District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration. My role at the SBA is to provide awareness or training on how to become certified to work with the federal government. And as Cheryl stated, I've done several classes on federal contract, but today we'll be talking about SBA programs and services. Next slide. SBA offer access to capital contracted and counseling. When I say offer access to capital, we don't do direct lending, but we have lending programs where we work with bank and we provide assistance by backing loans. We take the risk off of banks, which makes bank more inclined to lend. We have a few loan programs. We have the micro loan, which is 50,000 miles or less, SBA express loan, which is three fifth year less, the 504 and the 7A loan, which is five million or less. And SBA will back 75 to 80% of that loan if you do the SBA loan route. But you don't have to do the loan route. I mean, SBA, you can still get a loan through a bank, but SBA provide those services. We provide access to contracting to increase your business. So if you're trying to grow your business, we help you get certified to do federal contracting and we provide access to counseling. We don't do direct counseling ourselves. We have resource partners. We have the Small Business Development Center or the SBDC, who will be on shortly. We have the Women's Business Center. You already met Sheryl Sally, but we have two other. We have one in upstate and the one in the low country. And then we have SCORE, they're located throughout the state. And then we provide access to assist small business or homes who were impacted or were impacted by the flood. We had with the 50 year flood, the 100 year flood that happened back in 2015. A lot of homeowners were unable, their home loans did not provide enough assistance so SBA stepped in. And we provide low interest loan to assist homeowners and small business to get back up and running once they have impacted by those pandemics or flood. Like right now we're going through the pandemic. Next slide. During this pandemic for the last year and a half, almost two years, SBA has been instrumental in lending money to a lot of small business, not all small business. That's why Brad is doing the class next week because a lot of small business were not able to get assistance because for whatever reason or not. But we're here now to assist small business. SBA still have funding through the EIDL or the Ida Loan Program, which ends December the 31st, 2021. So you have less than 60 days in order to get those loan applications in. If you go to COVID-19 relief at SBA, I mean COVID-19relief.sba.gov, you still eligible apply for the EIDL loan. There are two grant portion of that loan. One is the targeted loan. If you Google targeted EIDL, you can find what you can and cannot do. You have to be in a low income area. For the target that you have to be 30% of your employees, I mean, I'm sorry, you must have a loss of least 30% for eight consecutive weeks. So in starting March and April or April and May of 2020, you have to have at least a 30% decrease from what you made in 2019. And you have to have 30 or few employees and you are eligible for up to a $10,000 grant. And then we have a supplemental. So the same thing applies, but you have to have at least a 50% decrease in revenue for eight weeks. And you have to have 10 or few employees. I think I got some of those numbers wrong. I think it's 10 for the supplemental, but that's up to $5,000 grant. So those grants are still available. You still have to go through the targeted program. Although you may not be eligible for the loan, you are still eligible for the grant if you get it in and get it filled out like today. So the grant program is still going on in order to get the loan portion of the EIDL. They're requesting your 2019, 18 and 17 taxes. And if you have not done your taxes yet, it might be too late because the IRS is behind in taxes and a lot of people holding up a lot of loan applications because they cannot get their tax or the transcript from the IRS. But I am not going to discourage you not to apply. Please continue to apply and let the government tell you're not eligible. Don't let Angela tell you're not an eligible because I can't tell you that. So please apply. Next slide. And this is our contact information. We have our main office that's located in Columbia. We have eight people that's working out of the main office and we have two alternate work sites, one in Charleston and one in Spartanburg. The one in Spartanburg is new. It just came into existence early part of this year, but we're all still currently working from home. And if you need any assistance, please reach out to us because we're here to assist small businesses in whatever aspect that we can. Next slide. Any questions? Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Ayesha. Thank you, Angela. That was great information. Now we want to go to our Richland Library with Diane. Yep, you're on. You're on mute, Diane. Good morning, everyone. It's so good to see you on this call. And I feel very honored to be in the company of Cheryl and Angela and of course Ayesha and all of the other folks who are doing amazing work in the community for our small business owners. So next slide, please. I'm just gonna take a couple of minutes to talk about four key areas of small business support. The first one is the entrepreneur and resident service that's offered by the library. The second is library of things. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. Our small business programming and other library small business services. So if you have not met our entrepreneur and residents, currently we have Roshanda Pratt. As our entrepreneur resident, she is just amazing. She has been with us for a few months now and will continue her residency until January 15th of 2022. So if you are a small business owner and you are interested in booking an appointment, it's one-on-one. It is a virtual appointment. You can do this two ways. You can either do it through the book an appointment link that you see on the screen or you can go to the library residence page at simply www.richlandlibrary.com forward slash residence. She is with us five appointments a week. So if you go in and there is not appointment available, don't despair because she does her appointments for the current week and the upcoming week. So next slide, please. The second thing to briefly discuss is the Richland Library. It began as the entrepreneurial library of things. And the web address is www.richlandlibrary.com forward slash library of things. We started out with just four different types of kits, a podcasting kit, a camera kit, a light kit, that kind of thing. Well, this particular service is free of charge for all Richland Library card holders and the whole project just mushroomed. And so during the pandemic, it was so important for access to items that might be expensive or perhaps, you know, something you wanted to try out before you were able to actually start your business. A good example of this would be someone who checked out two camera kits at the same time. And so you might say, well, why would you want two camera kits when you need one? But it turned out that this gentleman was thinking about starting a wedding photography business. So he actually did a wedding. He and a partner. And so they decided that this was a really good thing. So they were able to use the equipment from the library before they actually purchased their own. Next slide, please. The guidelines are check out for one week with one renewal. If there's no one waiting behind you. And of course you're responsible for all the materials, because we all want to be good stewards of library property. And then there is a charge. If you don't return the item and you can cancel the reservation or if the library sees that you haven't checked out after 24 hours of your reservation time, the item goes back into the inventory. Next slide, please. So how do you check out? You just have to be 18 and older. And you also have to have a original library card in good standing, which means that you owe less than $10 and fine. And the other thing is you sign a waiver to make sure that you will be able to take good care of this. Next slide, please. Community partners. I have several on this call. I just want to say thank you to all of you for joining me. Thank you so much for joining me. I love them all because they all do amazing work. And the situation here would be that we meet on the first Monday of each month. So our next meeting is Monday, December. Six. And if you are interested in joining that call, you just email me the Lucy at richlandlibrary.com. Next slide, please. Okay. So we talked about the entrepreneur residents. We talked about the small business owners in the community. So the situation is we've done programs that we have done. And why this is important is because we need to know the needs of the small business owners in the community. So the situation is we've done programs on hiring, marketing, negotiation, starting a business. And all the other things that you see on the screen. But if you are a small business and you are participating on this call, please email me with program ideas, because we love to hear from the community. We do have an entrepreneurs and small business Facebook group. It started out with just a few members, founding members. We now have over 2000 members. And it is a great place. If you're a government agency, and you are having upcoming program to please enter that information. It is not used to promote individual businesses. Next slide, please. Okay. We do have also, we have a lot of different types of business, and we have a lot of different types of business. So for example, Richland Library, small business databases. I've listed just a few of them. Again, totally free access. All you do is go to Richland Library. Then you go under research and learn. Choose business and careers. And then you go ahead and select the database. It will be most helpful. There is remote access as well. You can access it at Richland Library. You can access it at Richland Library. You can access it at Richland Library. And it would be helpful just for you to go ahead and review the resources on that page. You access it at Richland Library. Com. Forward slash entrepreneurs. Next slide. Library residents. Don't forget if you want to reserve a time to meet with Roshanda. You will go to W, W, W. Richland Library. Com. Forward slash residents. Next slide, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Andrina King is our workforce development specialist. Unfortunately, she has a sick child today, so she couldn't join us, but you can certainly reach out to her and she'll catch up with her email when she returns. Also, you can always contact me and our phone numbers are listed as well. Thank you so much for your time this morning. Really appreciate it. Thank you. That's some amazing information. I'm sure a lot of people in our call didn't even realize all the information was in the downtown. So thank you for providing that information. Now I would like to turn it over to Alan Brown with a small development. Good afternoon, everyone. And I hope everyone is having a great day. Happy Veterans Day to those who are on the call. A special shout out to the United States Marine Corps who celebrated their 446. Birthday on yesterday, you know, and that's from an army soldier. So congratulations and we appreciate the services of all the veterans on the call.  Thank our presenter because the information she's going to share is very important. Next slide, Aisha. You know, so here at the SBDC, we serve on the state of South Carolina through four regions and four host universities. They're listed there on the slide to your right. University of South Carolina, South Carolina State, Winter, and Clemson. We've been around for over 42 years. You know, it was one of the original pilot organizations when the SBDC started over 42 years ago. And we serve all 46 counties through 21 centers. In 2020, you know, we were able to help serve over close to 12,000 individuals across the state. You know, help start 143 businesses, help create close to 4,000 jobs, and help those small business owners retain, you know, just north of $77 million in capital. You know, one of the things that you'll also see in my next slide. Go to the next slide. Is that, you know, we do that primarily through three fundamental components and that's through education and resources. As the previous slide showed, through our educational component, we had over 10,000 attendees to our webinars and training events across the state. You know, so that's one way that we were able to help small business owners across the state. But fundamentally what we do here is through our no-feed private confidential consultations where we help you go from soup to nuts as it relates to ideation and where you are with the idea phase of your business to actual sustainable business where you're generating sales, hiring employees, you know, getting access to capital and eventually creating wealth for you and your family.  And so we work with our local community partners to help you get access to resources that we don't necessarily offer or have in-house, but through resource partners like banks and HR companies and equipment financing companies and IT companies and marketing companies. Just, you know, every type of service that you think that you'll need in order to get your business started and running successful. We have access to and we have resource partners. You know, next slide. And so, you know, if anything I've said resonates with you and you'd like to find out more about the SBDC, you know, you can go to the website that's listed there on the slide, www.sbsbdc.com. I know that's a mouthful. www.sbsbdc.com. I also want to let you know that, you know, and I think these individuals on the call, we have a COVID consultant. That's what we call them here. Mr. John Gellers, who's helping, you know, clients across the state of South Carolina, particularly in the USC region, get access to COVID funding. You know, if you've had some challenges in that area, you need some support. You know, give us a call. I'll put my contact information in the chat so that you can have access to it, but give us a call and we'll see what we can do to help you get the funding that you need through that EIDL program. And then also want to note that we do have Monique Priester, who's our new minority business manager who serves to start the state supporting our diversity inclusion initiative. And so if you fit into either one of those categories and you think we can be of assistance, feel free to reach out to us. And last note, we be on the lookout for information related to the bridge program. And just be on the, be on the lookout for that. Thank you, Aisha, and I turn the floor back. Thank you so much, Alan. So that's the conclusion of our partners presentations. It was so important to us that in all of you on the call, know that these resources are available. You have access to all these amazing opportunities. If there's any assistance you need, please feel free to contact us. And if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you so much for being one of our partners on the call that we can connect you with. So thank you so much to all of our partners for taking the time to join us today. And so we will get into our presentation. Ms. Sheila Tupwiler Dawkins. She's a financial strategist and tax accountant. She's principal and owner of Tupwiler Dawkins, LLC. She's an experienced international tax subject matter expert. She also is the previous team lead for one of the leading national accounting firms. We are so excited to welcome Sheila today to share information about how you as a small business can prepare your business for your end taxes, as well as talk about some of the financial management tools you need to have in place. So Sheila. Good morning. Can everyone see my screen? Yes, we can. Okay. It's a pleasure to be among a group of wonderful people and for all of you who are working to provide the necessary tools for us not only to start business, start business, start businesses, maintain businesses and more to the point we want to create generational wealth. One of the things that we always look at is my great concept and we know that the product you have, people need and want, you have a great business plan. You have an accountant, a banker, a lawyer, and trusted advisors. Then you work on all of your strategies, but the next thing you want to do is make sure you incorporate tax planning in your strategies. How do you do that? There are 10 questions that many entrepreneurs ask and they may not always be in the same criteria, but what laws impact what I am doing? How do I report my business income and expenses? Are there deductions that I can claim or their losses? If I have a loss, how do I report that? What is the best organizational structure? The first question that people always ask me is do I need an employer identification number? Or better yet, what is that? Do I have to file a state tax returns? What about employer taxes? And if I receive a notice from the state when I initially set up my entity, what does that mean? More to the point, how will I be taxed? Will my corporation or company be taxed? Or will it be taxed on an individual level? Typically, your tax, how you're taxed depends on your organizational structure, while there may be some legalities or some state implications that may be in the process. The best structure actually depends on what you're doing. Number one, how important it is or what type of partners you may have. Number two, how will you be taxed? Number three, and what is your liability as it relates to your personal or corporate debt? I try to stay out of the lane of the legal side of it. What I can tell you is the tax side of it, how you will be taxed. Typically, when I ask people how are they structured, the first thing they say, well, I'm an LLC, which is a limited liability corporation or company, but typically you are a sole proprietor, you're taxed in your actual individual tax return, which, by the way, is due 155 days from now.  So have a great Christmas, enjoy, and get ready for taxes. Partnerships and the 1120S are typically taxed on your Schedule E that is also included in your individual tax return, but your corporation is actually a tax return outside of your personal return. If you are an employee of a partnership or 1120S, and I'll talk about that shortly, or a corporation, you should receive a W-2. For the 1120S, you're required to pay yourself. Typically, with corporations, you'll get a W-2 as an employee or officer, and if you don't, then typically you may be in some type or you might want to reach out to your accountant. Let's talk about the first thing. When you decide you want to set up your LLC, for the most part, you will need a employer identification number. This is a number where the IRS actually attaches your income and your expenses to your business. If you have a Schedule C on the first page at the top, it will ask you for your employer identification number. You will need one if you have employees or you expect to have employees. If your business operates as a corporation or a partnership, and this also includes LLCs, if you file any other tax returns, employers tax returns such as a 941, depending on your business, you may be required to file excess or excise or other informational returns. More to the point, if you withhold taxes, and we'll talk about that later, for the most part, when you register with the state, I'm not sure if it's the first or the second or the third question, but it's one of those three right at the top. What is your corporation's name? What is your location? And do you have a EIN? What I will say, and you can get that really online from the IRS, typically if you do not, I'm sorry, typically if you do not, I don't know what to say, if you do not use that EIN for the most part because of, and they may have kind of slowed down on it now, but for the most part, if it's not used within two, two, three years, they typically deactivate it. So don't be, I would say, if you're not sure about your business, hold off. If you have registered an EIN and you haven't used it in the last three years, you might want to verify with the IRS if it's still active. All right, after you decided that you have an EIN, you have an EIN and you registered with your particular state, how do I report my business income? But so, prior to this, this is your schedule C, and I am going to kind of do a backdoor entry with what I'm going to say as it relates to getting loans, as it relates to those type of things. If you don't file your tax returns, you have issues with that because you're not able to pool your income. The other thing too is if you have a schedule C and you write off everything, which means I did not make any income, that's typically your W-2 as it relates to what you've made in your business. So that may put you in a position as it relates to how can I let Linda know how I'm going to pay for whatever it is that I'm borrowing because my schedule C says that I am not making any money. So you want to always make sure that you report your income, take advantage of any tax deductions, but recognize the difference between, there has to be a balance between what I'm writing off and what I need to do in order to sustain my business and all my personal needs. The sole proprietor, your schedule C, if you make more than $400, you are subject to self-employment tax. That means that typically what happens is if you are within a certain tax bracket, you're taxed on an effective or marginal rate. On top of that, as being self-employed, whatever that dollar amount is, then you're taxed on a 0.1530. So there is an additional tax that's involved with self-employment. One of the things that most sole proprietors get in trouble is they calculate their federal tax, but they don't include their self-employment tax. So at the end of the year, typically is a surprise because, well, I didn't make that much money, but there is a tax that's involved as it relates to your self-employment. Partnerships are not taxed on the partnership level. The partners actually go in, do their income, have their expenses. You should receive what we call a K-1. That K-1 is then reported on your schedule E, which rolls up into your tax return.  If there is two, whatever that net income is, you will tax on one half, and the other person will be taxed on the other half. The 1120S is different from any other corporation because you don't go to the state and say, I want to become a 1120S or we'll call it a shareholder's return. You have to have an accountant or you completed form 2553, requesting that the IRS designate your LLC as an 1120S. What that means is it release you from paying self-employment taxes. However, you must receive a W-2 and your profit and loss is reported on your schedule E. Let's take the sole propriety with the schedule C. I make $600. I'm taxed 10% on that $600, and I'm rounding it up because there's a 0.9235 that goes through the other scenario. Let me do $1,000 because of the E. $1,000, I'm taxed on that 10%, so I have to pay the $100 for my regular tax, and then I'm taxed on the other E, the 0.1530, which means I'm paying another $150. Take the 1120S, so I'm paying both the federal tax and I'm paying the self-employment tax. That same organization, which is the 1120S, my organization made $1,000. I deducted $500 for me to get a W-2. I pay taxes as it relates to I am a W-2 employee. My profit is $500. I'm only going to pay a federal tax on that $500. There is a savings that is involved. What I will say is that if you go through that process, you have to make sure that you're looking at the filing requirements because there's additional, it's more paper-intensive, which means you more than likely will need an accountant for that, so as you're looking to your accountant or your tax preparer, you want to have an open discussion with them as well as whether or not it is an advantage for you to become an 1120S. The 1120C, as we recently stated, the corporation is taxed, and then the officers are taxed as well. All right, and I just talked about that for the most part. This is just a reiteration. All of the organizations are taxed on a individual level with the exception of the 1120 corporation. The Schedule C or your sole proprietor is subject to self-employment, and your 1120S and partnerships are called pathrows, which means you're not subject to self-employment tax, but you are subject to whatever your marginal rate is. And I'm going to drop a little nugget here. If you're in your business and you are using PayPal and Venom and certain other pay apps, the IRS as of 2022 is going to require that these companies report transactions over $600. That's a new requirement that just came out within the last two to three days. So you might want to, if you're using PayPal, if you're using Cash App, if you're using Venom, and I think there's another one, Zalo, you might want to start keeping accurate records because there is a reporting requirement on that. One of the things that affect, some of the things that affect some of the laws that impact business taxes are estimated tax payments. One of the ways that you can actually look at what is going on in your business as it relates to your past personal return, you always want to do what we call a pay check-up. This is particularly important if you have a regular job and you have a spouse that has a job and you have a small business that because back, what was that, 2017, you were able to say, I made X amount of dollars, I have four dependents. I've got all of this itemized deduction so you are able to not only take itemized deductions, but you are also able to add that law with the Tax Cup Jobs Act took away the dependent exemption. It gave you the benefit of child tax credits, but for the most part, most people use the standard deductions so you are not able to take all of the things we used to write off, particularly if you are working for someone else. I know, and this is a question that people always ask, if I am employed, can I write off my home office? Unfortunately, the law does not allow us to do the unreimbursed job expenses. However, if you are self-employed and you talk about the home expenses in a minute, you can't write that off. By doing a paycheck checkup and there is a withholding calculator sponsored by the IRS, it will allow you to go through the whole process so you will know where you are. Typically, you are not penalized if you pay 85% of what you owed on last year. There are still some lingering COVID exceptions that are provided, but if you are not making estimated tax payments, then there is a possibility that you will owe taxes on the end. Now, let me go back to the screen. One of the major questions, I'm sorry, keep hitting my boy, one of the major questions that we talk about is the Qualified Business Income Tax deduction. When the tax, I'm sorry, the Tax Jobs Act came along, corporations, 1120 C's were given a tax rate cut. So the government, so the powers that be said that, what about the small businesses? What about the S corporations? What about the sole proprietors, S states to trust? How do we benefit them or how do we lower their taxes? What came along was the section 199A. That allows, within respect, and there are some, there are some exceptions to the rule that allows 25, 20, that you're able to get a deduction of up to 20% of your Qualified Business Income. What it does is, is if you made $1,000, then you can get 20, I'm sorry, $200 deduction off that. So you're only taxed on that $800. However, it does not take away the self-employment tax. So that's your, you get that deduction as it relates to your income, but you're still responsible for that self-employment tax. It also depends on the type of trade or businesses. There is, there are W2 wages that are involved in that. And then there is a scenario as it relates to your basis or your unadjusted basis. When we talk about basis, we talk about what you invested in the business. My basis practically is, if I put $5,000 into my business with equipment, what else? Equipment, space, paper, whatever you did to invest in your business, that is typically your basis. And that is, I'm giving it to you on a, on a base level. There's some other things that are involved. There are some limitations. If you are, if you are married, found in joint and, and you make over 350, 15,000. Also, if you are single or head of household and 157,500. It is a big deal. You will more than likely need to have a, an accountant, an accountant explain all of this to you because trust me when I say, even we're, we're still, this happened, I think in 2018, we are still trying to figure all of this out. And hopefully no one will change the law before we all get it understood. Before I move further, let me go ahead and finish this. Meals and entertainment expenses. There is an adjustment in 20 for 2021 where you are able to take your meals. As a hundred percent. There are some stipulations involved. Of course, meals, I mean, meals that relate to alcohol, drinking, having a party, those are kind of out of, out of the, the, the whim. If you're taking a client to for meals, that's also something that you can deduct. And, or if you're feeding your organization, of course you can deduct that as well. There are some employed your tax credits that are involved for this year. Let me back up the law with meals and entertainment expenses. And I'm going to read this. It says the law does not allow food and beverages. Purchase or consume doing an entertainment event, even as an even, I'm sorry, as an entertainment event. If they are purchased separately from the entertainment or stated separately from the entertainment on one or more bills, invoices or receipts. In addition to that, if you bought, if you bought lunch, when I'm going from one client to the other and I buy lunch, that's not considered a meal that I can, can deduct. Of course you can deduct your mileage as it relates to that. And we will talk about that as well. There are some employer tax credits that are still in play because of COVID. Those being the, if you have employed employees and they have to be all for COVID related family and medically. And also there are some, there are some new tax credit as it relates to the rehab, I'm sorry, rehabilitation. And do we have any questions at this point? I know I'm throwing out a lot of information. You don't have any questions at this time. Okay. Most people want to know what can I deduct and how can I deduct? The IRS is very clear. They call it ordinary and necessary. I have an accounting firm. My ordinary and necessary equipment includes tax software. I need office space. I need computers. I need printers. I need air fresheners in my car. Then let's flip it with the Uber driver. He may need a laptop. He may need paper. Or she may need paper. She may not necessarily need a business office. Because that's not ordinary and necessary. There are some lead ways involved. But make sure that you're talking to someone. And it's kind of self-explanatory. Certain things that I don't need a refrigerator as my ordinary and necessary. But if I have a food truck, a refrigerator is ordinary and necessary. Home office. This is where a lot of people get into trouble. If you don't have a home office, you don't have a home office. Your home office is deductible. If it is your principal place of business, meaning that it's regular and exclusive. For those of us who work from home, we may have a space at some of the, what you call it, the co-workers place where you go in maybe once a month just to make sure that you don't want them to be at your home. You can still claim that as your home office. If you're self-employed, yes. You can claim your home office. If you are, work for someone else, you cannot claim your home office, even if you are working remotely. For the most part, I try to say this. I try to explain to people whenever there is a simplified method or a simplified option that the IRS gives you, take that unless you have all records to show that it is, that it is there. There are some scenarios that are involved when you take your home office, like if you take the depreciation, et cetera, et cetera, if you sell your primary resident and you use a portion of that as a business, then theoretically, you are supposed to recapture that depreciation. You can use actual expenses that include your mortgage interest, insurance, utilities, repairs and depreciation. But you have to make sure that those are involved. There are differences if you have a daycare center, there are some stipulations for that. If you have a garage or a storehouse that you store your products, there are differences as it relates to that. Yeah, talked about the daycare centers. And the records that you should keep. And just for the purposes of record keeping, the IRS does not require that you have a different bank account, although I suggest that you do that. But it does require that you keep separate and good accurate records and that you can say I made $1,000, I spent $900, so my profit is $100, and those are attached to that income. Let me see this. Oh, we talked about the cost of goods, which is simple, running expenses, mileage, going to and from your clients' homes or whatever you need to do that. I think this year is .575. I hadn't seen what the mileage rate is for 2022. Interest in taxes and insurance and insurance for your business, your ENO, your workers' comp, that is on your schedule. See if you're a sole proprietor. If you are self-employed and you have health insurance that typically falls in as an adjustment. And if you are self-employed and you pay health insurance, you're able to get an adjustment with your insurance. Capital expenses, start-up costs, business assets, improvement. I am starting up a business. It took me $950 to create my LLC. I had to buy all of my office equipment. I spent over $5,000 on that. Typically what you need to do is either depreciate it or amortize it. And this also includes depreciation. So for capital expenses, there are rules as it relates to depreciated, meaning that I spent $9000 in order to get my business up and running. I have to depreciate that over a period of time versus taking all of that in one hit. Can you claim a business loss? If you are at risk, meaning that I participate in that business, then for the most part, the answer is yes. Before 2017, there was where you could take all of your business losses, including net operating losses, backwards who can't do that anymore. Any disallowed, the law says that the law limits it up to 80% of your taxable income. If you have any disallowed business losses, you can carry them forward up to 20 years. There are some stipulations related to that. And I think that's one of the reasons that we're trying to get all of the indices involved in that. Casualty losses is a question that people always asking. The tax cut jobs act made it something that we can't do at this point unless it is related to a disaster that was designated to be a disaster zone. And that was the 100-year flood that came along. If you're in tornadoes or something like that, where FEMA has designated your particular area as being in a disaster zone, that's when you can take a casualty loss. If you lost your ring and it was $200,000, you cannot get that back. You will have to file a state return. The short answer to that is yes. We always talk about the federal part of everything. When people sit down with me, they just throw South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, wherever you are, unless you're in Florida, Tennessee, it's a couple other states. But I know Florida, Tennessee, it's five states that I'm aware of. I believe it's Texas, but it's five states that I'm aware of that do not have income taxes. They have other taxes, but they do not have income taxes. For the most part, states follow federal law. Typically, and for the most part, South Carolina is a piggyback state. However, that 20% that you were able to take from your income for your federal, you got to add that back into your taxable income with South Carolina. Another consideration is there are some deductions you can take as it relates to the federal that may reduce your federal return, but you got to add that back in to your state. So if those things need to be weighed, I always tell people to look at how, two things, the section 179 allows individuals who have made certain purchases for equipment, vehicles and software to be able to take that immediate deduction, which means that that's going to lower your taxes year one. Year two, you make more money, but I've taken all of the deduction in year two, so I don't have anything to write off, I mean, I've taken all the deduction in year one, so I don't have anything to write off in year two. Always keep that consideration in mind. More to the point, if I've taken my total section 179, what I've taken that complete $50,000 that reduced my federal return, I can't take that in year two. More to the point, I'm gonna have to add that $50,000 back into my state, and I'm only able to take that deduction. So when you're talking or when you're doing your taxes yourself, make sure you're looking at the state implications as well as the federal. And of course, the state also requires estimated taxes. I take the rule of thumb, if you are calculating your federal views in the, if you're doing a paycheck checkup and you are calculating your federal, then I will look at my 2020 return to see what my rate is. And if it was prepared by a, if it was prepared by a professional, you should have a comparison sheet in both your federal and your state that tells you your, tells you your marginal rate. Go ahead and do a state, a state checkup as well. Sheila, we do have some questions. If you want to take those questions, we can have, Lena can ask those for you. Okay. The first question is from Jennifer. She wants to know if my business is registered as an LLC and composed of two partners, will I be reporting income on a schedule E? No. If you are LLC, you, you, if you, if you're LLC, you need to talk to a, you need to talk to an accountant, a tax preparer. You can actually do, that's, that should, they should, you should be able to do a smooth transition to a partnership. And then that is reported on as, as a schedule E, or you want to file the 2553 to change your LLC to a 1120S. Husbands and wives cannot do a 1120S. If you don't file as a partnership and you're not a 1120S, then what you need to do is take your books and you take a portion of the schedule C and the other person takes a portion, portion of the schedule C. That is a question that a lot of people ask. And really that I'm giving you general information. That's some, if you're doing that, and it's over $5,000. I would suggest that you talk to a professional. Okay. The next question is from Alicia Davis. She says, I have a business client and the business was established by two individuals in 2021. They were not set up as a partnership. What's the best method or form to use to file their tax return. So the business is set up in this year. Is it the question would be, is it, is it, is it active or you just set it up? According to, they were not set up as a partnership. But this, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's so, so, so it's down to the business, getting the business plan going. Have you generated income and expenses? She's active. Okay. If you're generating income and expenses and it's not set up as a partnership, that's the answer to that question is actually the same. You're going to have to split that down the middle. You should have an EIN and you'll have to split that down the middle. If you talk to a professional, they may be able to with just a little amount of work. And then the other thing too is you probably want to make sure that you have the, your, your paperwork looked at by an attorney to ensure that all of your legalities as it relates to the state or found as well. Sometimes we, and, and to be honest, just, just, just, just being transparent with as much knowledge as I have with what I do and I tell people to do this all the time. When I had an attorney take a look at my LLC, there were some things that I missed. Even though I do this every day. So she was able to get that documentation in, in, in retroactive to make sure that number one, because I had checked the box that I'm viable for, for, for whatever happens it, you know, check the wrong box. So what I would do is have someone that is, um, that has the legal knowledge to make sure that your, your documentation is correct because there are times when you have an LLC and if it's not set up properly, you can't even switch it to a partnership. So I would say that would be number one, making sure that those documentations is in place. Number two would be if the documentation is in place, you can very easily or professional can very easily go ahead and file that as a partnership with some, some stations, some stipulations. Otherwise you'll have to split the income down and down the middle one side gets the $500 and the other side gets the $500. That is the same. Also, if you're rent, if you are, if you're in, um, if you and a friend bought a rental property, a rental property and you guys are renting it. It's typically not a partnership. You just have to say Joe blow and Joe, Joe dough has 50% of this and 50% of that. And most tax preparers should be able to do that quite well. Hey, we got another question. Um, this question is from Jennifer. She said, she asked our startup. Are the startup costs only limited to the first year of operation? For the most part, yes. But you can be in a transition because I like I, I actually started my business. July the 23rd. I'm still going through the startup process, even though it's viable. So there may be some things that I need to do between now and July the 23rd of. 22. So I think that's a good start up. But at some point you become an existing business and the IRS doesn't really give you a prolonged amount of time to start up your business. Uh, and it depends on the business itself. It depends on when you started the business. If I'm opening up a, I don't know, subway. Uh, and I've got to do the franchises and I'm building out my business. And if I am. Open and eliminate stand in front of my yard that takes 20 minutes. So, you know, you have to look at what you're doing and, uh, how you're doing it. The other thing too, that we actually have to be very concerned about, um, e-commerce is going to be probably the biggest thing that's going to get people in trouble. Um, and I think we're, we're, but in, in jeopardy, because a lot of times you have to make sure of the laws that you're, uh, that's the state laws as it relates to whether or not you, you have a presence in, um, that particular, uh, state. I mean, remember, I don't, I've been using Amazon flag forever. But back in the day when we first started doing Amazon, we did not pay any taxes. It was like, okay, it was $16 and 80 cent and that, that's all that, that's, uh, all that needed to play. But then there the law came out with the fair and I forgot what state it was that says, if you're selling to someone in a different state, then you need to be collecting taxes and paying that taxes back to the state. And that's something that as we transition from breaking water to e-commerce, you want to make sure that you understand whether or not you have a, you have a presence in whatever state that you're selling to it. And I'm not sure of all of the laws as it relates to that, but if you start selling a lot in a particular state, uh, especially states that don't have any, um, reciprocal reciprocal agreement, then you can, um, be held accountable to sales tax, which I have not talked a whole lot about, but sales tax is another thing that you need to be aware of sales tax and your business property taxes. Any other questions? No ma'am, those are all the questions we have right now. Okay. Um, we're talking about employer taxes and for a startup organization, for startup organizations, as well as existing organizations, the IRS has, has been cracking down on what they consider to be an employer, your, I mean an employee versus a subcontractor. If you can dictate when, how, where, and that person has to show up on your site, then for the most part that person is an employer, I'm employee, I'm sorry, which means you need to collect taxes, you need to pay your portions of Medicare and FICA, you need to pay federal unemployment. And I think that's like that. Point oh six percent in the state unemployment taxes depends on, uh, where you fall in that, in that threshold typically is relatively inexpensive unless you are, um, laying off a lot of people. I think there has been some remediation as it relates to COVID, but those are the things that you, um, that you have to pay. And when you look at employee versus contractor, when I was working for Clark, Eustace and Wagner, I was literally doing the same thing that I'm doing right now. Absolutely the very same thing. But the difference is I had to go to Clark Eustace Wagner from 830 until whatever time we left, uh, they had, they gave me, uh, a software that I needed to work on. They gave me certain policies and processes that, that, uh, I needed to use. And then they could tell me when and when the project needed to be done, not necessarily how, but there was a umbrella around what I'm doing. I was an employee. I'm doing the exact same thing with my clients. I walk in, do the same thing, but they, we have a discussion as it relates to what I'm doing, but then I take whatever the information that they give me. And then I do the how and the why on the back end. So understanding, and this is something that that's, this is one of those big flags that the IRS is, is, is starting to raise on, um, understand the difference between your employer, I'm sorry, employee, contractor, the agency is another one that they're starting to raise. And of course the, uh, we already talked about the, um, cash ads. When I first opened my business, even though I did not have an employee, I received a note, a notice from the state that had me to fill out information as it relates to, uh, as it relates to unemployment taxes and withholding taxes, all of that. Also, it said me a notice that asked me about sales tax. Now, I understood that those notices needed to be filed. I sent back that information with none, none, none, and zero, zero, zero. I didn't get anything back. And if you look at my records, I'm clean. I have worked with clients who did not respond. They are getting notices back to back, back to back because they did not respond. I had a client that worked that sales takes and she just started up. She estimated, I guess on something with the, with the, uh, with the state as it relates to sales tax. She received a notice about 90 days later that says she owed $639. And there was penalties attached to it, even though she had not made any sales because she did not, because she ignored the notice and kept it moving. They started to tax her. If you receive a notice from the state, do not ignore it. Even if your business does not, does not have any activity. And the other thing too, from the IRS, if you receive a notice from the IRS, do not ignore it specifically. If you are receiving what's at, uh, uh, the 1089. If you're receiving, um, I think it's called a K. I forget the 1099 K. That's from you're using a square or you're using, um, or credit cards or any of those light machines. You receive a 1099 K. If you receive a W2, if you receive a 1099, any, any C, they already have that information because as the, as the, uh, business owner, I'm required to send that information to the IRS, to the state, so that I won't be penalized. If you don't respond to that, then the IRS says, okay, you got $100,000. It does not know that you spend a hundred and 1000 in order for your business to, um, to sustain itself. So they're going to tax you or send you a notice based on your gross income and not based on your net. Don't ignore notices. So pay attention to your sales tax notices over the last year. I know that the state has been doing a really good job of trying to standardize property business property tax returns. If you receive a property return, please have, if you don't understand it, have someone completed as well. Also just another note for existing businesses. If you, if you have abandoned any office equipment, please make sure that you update your schedules because you're taxed on that as it relates to your property return. I am basically, uh, done with my session. These are the resources at you, uh, which is my company, uh, the IRS.gov business. The IRS.gov. Uh, first of all, I'm gonna say this is the first year that I've actually felt sorry for them because we've had five major tax law changes in less than two years and nobody, everything has just been thrown up against the wall. So we're all in this together, but they do have great resources as it relates to your business. Um, quick books, of course, I always talk about quick books. I am a pro advisor. It is one of those softwares that, uh, if you, it puts it in layman's term, there may be some things that you may not understand about it, but the one for the sole proprietor is, is relatively inexpensive. And it also, it came as to the fact that you may not know all of the accounting terms. If your business has grown and you need some type of enterprise, enterprise or integrated software, striven software is, is another software that allows you to do project management as well as accounting and customer relations. So that's a good software that I recommend. And the last one is the one that I was talking about, which is the withholding calculator. I am going to do that over the Thanksgiving holidays just because I've worked this year. I've opened a business. My husband works. He does cryptocurrency. We have a whole lot of things going on. I'm going to do a check so that we know where we are. So even if we owe, we can start putting money aside before we spend it all on the Christmas holidays. Now I am going to stop sharing my screen for any additional questions. And I know I gave a lot of information. You don't have any questions in the chat right now. Yeah, if anyone wants to take time right now to put your questions in the chat, we can do that and we'll take those questions. But Sheila, this has been amazing workshop. Like you said that the changes that have occurred over the past couple of years, I think it's very important that our business owners stay abreast of those changes and hire a tax professional to make sure that they know what's going on, what they were doing two years, three years ago that might not be allowed now. So they need to make sure that they know those changes have occurred. And also even with the infrastructure, there's some tax related entities that are involved. Anytime there's anything that's dealing with money. You can rest assured there's some tax implications involved in that. So you really want to make sure that your tax returns are filed. And if they're filed on taxes, John said, is your firm more of a tax advisory or tax compliant? I'm both. A good preparer advises as well as keep you compliant. A good accountant is one that will understand your insights, understand what you're trying to do with your business, as well as looking at tax planning. Anyone can do your taxes for the most part, but you want a partner that is going to look at what you're trying to do. And someone who's going to look at your tax plan, what you're trying to do, and someone who's going to look at your business over the long haul, I'm working with my clients now and we're going through and doing a tax checkup to see if we're going to owe any taxes to see if he needs to participate in self-employment, IRAs. Those are things that you can reduce your taxes without reducing your income. But with that schedule C, he's showing that he has income, but he's taking those monies and investing in his retirement. So he's not hurting his income, which means he can apply for a loan if he wants to, but he's taking advantage of other tax savings. So you always want someone who wants to keep you compliant as well as advised. That's good, Sheila. And Kalina did put your contact information in the chat for anyone who wants to reach out to you. We just got a question came in the chat from Ashley. Okay. Do I have experience with forest crypto trade trading? Unfortunately, yes. I think I was the first one who had to learn crypto because unbeknownst to me, my husband just decided that that was a good idea for him. I mean, it's been successful, but there are some really just to be short for now. The IRS looks at cryptocurrencies as property, the same way you would look at stocks. So it's for the most part taxed on your schedule D. If you held it for a year, it's long term. If you held it under a year, it's short term. And for the most part of the tax event occurs when there is a hard fork or you say the hard fork means that I bought Bitcoin and then I bought Bitcoin so big coin and went to another exchange. That's where the tax, the tax event comes in. So there are a number of things that is really happening that are amazing. And it's so funny. I haven't been doing this for a minute. I love when the IRS decides that they want to go out for something because back in the day, they started asking, do you have any money in a foreign company? And you just check, yes. And then the next thing on your schedule B it says, do you have any money that makes over $10,000? And you just check, yes. And then the following brings, okay, one taxed. Two years ago, they asked on the bottom of one form, do you have any cryptocurrency? The answer is yes. Last year it was at the front on your schedule one that says, do you have? The answer is yes. This year they're really requiring that you report that information. And two other questions, what does a target client look like? I absolutely enjoy men. Want to work with you all day long. But let me just say this. In the state of South Carolina doing the pandemic, 85% of businesses that were open were opened by females. Of that, 60% was opened by African American females. We are on point, but a lot of times we are creative. We know what we want to do. You're missing that piece. My target market is you. I want to work with you to get you to the point to where you're not only, you know, where I am. Okay. I was making X amount of dollars a month. I need to make X amount of dollars a month so I can make sure I pay my car note in my bills. Let's move from that to where we're creating generational wealth. I want to pay taxes because if I, well, I don't want to pay taxes. I want to look for ways to mitigate it, but I want to be able to have the need to mitigate because that means I'm making money, which means I can establish wealth. So you are my target market. Industry expertise, construction, real estate, staffing, accounting is accounting. I am not in the food industry, but I can help. And I'm also really good with this distributions. I work with you because I want to know you and I want to help you create a strategy that keeps your business viable. So when you go to Sheryl and when you go to Mr. White and you've got all your paperwork in line and he looks at you and he says great paperwork. Let's go ahead and fill out so we can get that long. That's, that's my goal. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. You did a great job. You kept us on time. And you, I love your examples of your different clients. I think that's very, really helpful for our clients to know your experience and some of the things that you see as you're helping individual businesses. Melissa, do you have any last words? I do. I want to also ask this question. You may know this. Due to COVID, has there been a backlog of returns that were melded in and the IRS actually, you know, notifying you of, okay, it's been recently a number of businesses are trying to apply for the EIDL. Let me, let me say this as of, as of September the 30th, we got a notice out that stated that the IRS was 11 million pieces of backlog. Which means that those, those returns are there. Right. But if a business is trying to secure a loan or something else, if they contact the IRS or get that permission to.  There are some, they have done some things on the back end as it relates to trying to get the information, your transcripts that I may be privy to that can provide you guys that give you a way to get that in. Also, you know, if you, if you need assistance, just reach out to me and I'll see what I can do on my end. Wow. But you know, it's, it's, it's very, like this, I have been working doing what I'm doing now since 2008. And usually I scream about them and the IRS is, but honestly this year, I literally feel it's because they've had to go through COVID. Those five tax, tax those five changes. Sorry. Thank you. So that means that they can't really verify those tax returns.   But you may be, they were expecting a stamp copy of your tax, you know, going to the IRS is going to stamp copy saying, yeah, we received your taxes, but it has not been processed, but so many people have fraudulently done that, that they have stopped doing that now. So if it has not been in the system and process, you know, some one person or two people can make it bad for everyone, but we were, well, SBA disaster team were accepting a stamp copy from the IRS saying your tax, we have received your taxes, but it has gotten so bad where fraudulent people have gotten a stamp or got a copy of the stamp and has fraudulently started, started stepping taxes that, and they will accept in their own personal copy of the taxes while they're waiting on the tax transcript. But now they're not even doing that anymore. So what about people that, you know, aren't doing that? I mean, how are you helping those that need funding? Go ahead. So they were mailed in, they were not e-filed? Some people have corrected copies. You know, some people, so when they pull the tax, because I've been encountering that all week, they have pulled tax transcript, but they have been changed on the tax transcript since they submitted it and was processed. So they have to correct the copy. SBA were allowed them to go to the IRS to get the stamp, but now with so many people putting fraud, they're not doing that anymore. So some people have mailed it in, some people are just not doing taxes.  And the EIDL is in less than 60 days. And you have to have your actual application in the system. Money has to be allocated, not that they have produced or done anything with it. They look at your application, the money has to actually be allocated for you while they're processing the loan. And then if you're not allocated, the money hadn't been allocated, although you put an application in, you're not eligible for a loan. But a completed application would require that they have your tax verification. So if you mailed your taxes in and the IRS is unable to process it because of the backlog, then you're going to be just out. SBA have some kind of way, I don't know what they're doing as a headquarters, but they are doing something for some people who the application of the ones who are eligible and they are processing. I don't know what communication or how they go in and find, but they have some kind of communication with the actual IRS that they are working on that. It's probably if it's been filed electronically though. Yeah, it's probably easy, but if it's been done mailed in, I can't say, but a lot of people are just now filing the taxes. They're 2019 taxes because SBA requires 2019 taxes in order to do the EIDL. Because I've talked to people who just filed the taxes last month or in September. So now it's SBA fault that it can't get along. Well, I think that's the reason too that we're talking about timeliness. Yeah. And I don't know if our presenter wants to talk about and reiterate that. Yeah. So just for the record, if your tax preparer files more than 10 returns, they need, they should, the IRS says that it should be e-filed unless there is some, you know, you're a foreign entity or something like that. So you need to have a preparer that e-files your return.  Number two, number three as business owners, a lot of times we try to do things ourselves. That doesn't always work out in your favor when you're operating a business. If you have a W-2 and you get earned income credit and maybe a, what is the, the opportunity that you may be able to spend your tax return and VITA, which is another resource that someone will do your taxes provided that, you know, there are some stipulations as relates to that. The cooperative ministry, if you make under 60, last year was $65,000, it may be up to 70 this year. And so if you have a schedule C or a K-1, that's free of charge. I don't want to knock the big box tax companies. I'm not saying that that, but they hired them, they're not specialists in the field. They're a plumber on Monday. They go in and do your work on Tuesday. You need to have a professional accountant that prepares your return that understands the relationships you have or what you are trying to do.  So having that relationship with your preparer, your accountant is critical when you are making financial decisions. Absolutely. That's as important as anything. And I mean, I understand a lot of times we think that that's a reason, that's something that we can wait to have. That needs to be on the front end versus on the back end. Yeah. And even if you're doing yourself, I don't know if you said that it's best to have someone like yourself or service or tax accountant, service provider to check off what you think you may have done right. Right. And that's a lot of times that I have, I had to clean up three years of tax returns where the person was actually an accountant, but not a tax accountant. And I had to go back and read. So you need someone to eat and breathe. Right. And breathe. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's one of the best investments that you can make in your company. I agree. I agree. Thank you. I was one other question that raised. I can't think. Do we have anything in the chat from anyone else? More. No questions in the chat right now. This has been absolutely a pleasure. I enjoy. Doing what I did. This has been great. And we have put your information in the chat box. And I learned a lot. And I probably will be calling you because I do have some questions. I'm not. Right. So, but there was one more thing and that is about making sure that you find someone that does your taxes or assist you with your taxes. And you want to be shown as a viable business. Oh, people are so busy trying to get money back. That they do not. Show or demonstrate, you know, that they earn revenue. Which has made them unfortunately unable to access funds. From both traditional and non-traditional lenders. But also they haven't been able to show a loss, a real loss. In order to access some of the SBA programs that were out there. I hope that was a lesson that a lot of people learned. I don't know if you want to talk about that.  I'm going to move away from the business. I work for TD Bank as a underwriter. Dealing with small businesses. One of the things we asked for was number one, three years of tax returns. And if it was in the middle of a year, you could provide us with a profit and loss statement. That's what you're looking at the average over those three years. You have a loss in 2018. You had a loss in 2019. This is 2020. I'm just using years. Your profit and loss statement says that you have a gain of, I don't know, $40,000. You want to get a $20,000 loan. When I look at the average of that. If you take that average, you cannot afford that loan. You cannot afford a credit card. You cannot afford a mortgage. You cannot afford a business loan. You cannot afford a car because that average over that period says that you're not making any money. So you have to take the process of what I am trying to do. How I'm growing my business. What do I need to have?  So when I walk into a bank with last year, I got a new car. I had a nice W2. They said my credit was straight. Got my W2. We good. This year or next year, when I get ready to go to the bank, I'm going to have to take my schedule C or my schedule E, or my 1120 S. If that 1120 S says that I did not make any money, credit score may be great. I may be paying on my bills, but I'm not making any money. Then that turns me down. So you have to gauge that in what you're doing. It's important that you don't pay. You don't have to pay, but it's important that you show your business as being viable, because that allows you, that opens doors for you that you don't necessarily have. If you're not showing that you're making money. I think I'm right with that, Mr. Widen. You hit the nail on the head. Amen and amen again. I have one quick question for you because I'm really interested in the crypto. Are they, are they looking at that as capital gains? Yes. Okay. The only time it's looked at as cash, which is probably going to start happening in 2022, because P WC decided that they got to pay with that. And I know a lot of other places are accepted. If you use that, that crypto to buy or sale or pay someone, then it's treated as cash. All the rise is treated as capital gains. Thank you. Very good question. That might be another workshop we need to do. I was just about to say that. I was just about to say that that would be good. Next one. Yeah. Especially with the new year and all of these different points coming out and people wanting to get paid, mayors wanting to be paid in crypto currency. I think that's needed. Yeah. I think we all thought that it was going to go away. And it was. Yeah. Still here. When the IRS says ups. We missing money. It's real. I want to make sure our guests do not have any more questions. This has been phenomenal. Thank you so much. I think we all learned a lot. I want to thank our partner, Cheryl, Angela. Alan. Is Diane still on? Yeah. She's here. Yeah, she is. Okay. And Diane, I want to encourage you if you have not visited Richland County library, especially one downtown is a wealth of information and free resources. You have to do your homework. You have to research. So accounting is, is something that's fundamental, but also just being able to grow your business and understand the market that you're in. You have to be able to grow your business. You have to be able to grow your business. And the market that's constantly changing is, is very, very important to you sustaining your business and growing your business. So please. And yeah, I'm a little biased. My mom was a librarian, but I love the library and I love Richland County. I spent a lot of times that you can imagine a lot of time in the library growing up as a child. And I think that's why I'm here. I'm a great source. They is not sure your grandmother's or your mother's library is a new. Innovative. Easy to access resource that your tax dollars have paid for. And it's phenomenal. And they have experts there to really help you. So just don't forget about that. And we did get. What's sad business. Do you like to work with it? I prefer. Okay, so let me. I prefer. 25 KT. My sweet part sweet spot is actually those businesses that grows between 50,000 and 1.2. But I will work with anyone. And I, the goal is as a partner. I work with people. I work with people. I work with people. And I am. One of the reasons why I'm in business for myself is I had to believe that my calling is to help people so that. I have to eat. Please understand that I have to eat. And I'm working for myself. So there is a charge. But I will work with you. And I also want to say there's anyone on the call. We are working with her directly. Not to do any. We are working with her directly. But we are working with her directly. So if you're interested in that, I think that you may need, but just for her to meet with you. One on one. And to help you figure out where you are. So if you're interested in that, again, that's as much as we can do. But, you know, that's something that you need to do. Go ahead and sit down with her. That's something that the city is working on. If you are interested in that service, please contact Mr. Widing or. Or Ms. Widing. We're here for you. And we want to make sure that some of you that are starting or don't know where to go. That you have this expertise at your disposal right now. And we can't get into the actual taxes because that's a different story, but we do want her to help you understand where you are. Yeah. We're doing the same thing at the WBC. Partnering with Ms. Tutwile and Dawkins. So happy to have her as a resource partner helping our clients. And that's what we're doing. And we have a lot of work to do. And we're also helping them to share with the city. So we have some services available. And we have some workshops that I think this workshop will be repeated partner with the city. In a month or so. So we'll, we'll say all these things again and some more. And then we'll coordinate with the resource partners to get into crypto currency and maybe share some of that in the coming. Couple of months in the next one. You need to do that right away. Yes. job. All right thank you all for joining us today. You see we could talk for hours on this topic but it's because it's so important and we want to see our businesses be successful so we want to make sure you have the resources necessary to do that. So this afternoon you will receive a copy of the recording, the slides and a survey. We ask that you please take some time to complete that survey for us so that we can get feedback. Again thank you to our partners. Thank you so much Sheila. We love our partnership with you and if anything that our office can do for anyone on the webinar today please contact us and we'll be happy to schedule a time to meet with you. We hope everyone stays safe. Take care of each other and we have a great rest of your day. Bye. Thank you. Thanks everybody.


It is a future where Islam is going to become not only the predominant faith, but in many ways the solution to humanity. For all my Muslim friends and some of the people that I am very close to, I don't want you to think that this is an endorsement of the Muslim faith. Assalamualaikum brothers and sisters, we are back with another episode of the Open Minded Thinker Show that you watched that video, but you know what's interesting? Throughout history, many keen observers have made predictions about Islam becoming the saviour of civilization. It's not just something that has been said in the West. People all over the world have talked about it severally. Speaking of interesting perspectives, remember when Elon Musk, the world's richest person, gave a lecture in Dubai. He had some wise advice for Muslims in Middle Easterners. He encouraged them to embrace and preserve the unique aspects of their culture. According to him, these diversity is crucial for maintaining the natural homogeneity of our world. I know this is called the World Government Summit, but I think we should be maybe a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government, if I may say that we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having, frankly, this may sound a little odd, too much cooperation between governments. If you look at history and the rise and fall of civilizations, really all throughout history civilizations have risen and fallen, but it hasn't meant the doom of humanity as a whole because there have been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances.  So, you won't believe what I came across recently. You remember that Russian political philosopher, Alexander Dugging. Time, space, technology, international relations. Well, he's been making a pretty serious case for something called multi-polarity. Basically, it's all about promoting cooperation between different civilizations and get this. In 2019, he organized this epic event called the Eurasian Islamic Council. He brought together Muslim scholars, politicians and activists from all over the world to have some deep discussions on Islamic culture, geopolitics and the future of Eurasia. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. This philosopher, Dugging, has this whole geopolitical ideology called Eurasianism. It's all about envisioning a world where different civilizations, including Islamic civilization, can cooperate whilst you're maintaining their unique identities. It's like he's proposing a multi-polar world where everyone worked together for their common goals. And guess what? In today's episode, we've got a special guest, a Catholic guy who has some mind-blowing insight on the whole idea of Islamic domination. What that future looks like is a future where Islam is going to become not only the predominant faith, but in many ways the solution to humanity. For all my Muslim friends and some of the people that I'm very close to, I don't want you to think that this is an endorsement of the Muslim faith. It's just something that appears to be so self-evident, but I think that some of us have to have a conversation in that direction. I think that the way we're tilting right now, the way humanity is developing, from politics to economy to many delicate issues that deals with what it means to be a decent member of society, at some point it's going to require a very strong correction. And it's not going to be the orthodoxy of the Jewish faith. It's not going to be the level of tolerance that comes from Hinduism, Buddhism, or Taoism. And it's definitely not going to be through the sometimes false mercy that comes or incredible acceptance, levels of acceptance that comes from the Christian faith. It's painful to say that, right? It should be a situation where love and kindness should be always the predominant factor to give direction. But that's not necessarily the case. In some cases you need something, a way of doing things that would be strong enough, forceful enough, to the extent of actually forcing the correction. And this is one of those moments that, as people, we are getting to the point where certain levels of correction are needed. And I think that Islam today is positioning itself as a faith that is willing to fight for what they believe. They're going to stand their ground. They're going to go out there and not only make an argument, but they will absolutely go and fight for it. The question of whether I agree with him or not is no, Brenna, because I do agree with him that Islam stands firm on a doctrine that is compared with Christianity and Judaism. The farce are obvious for all to see. After the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church, which until that time was seen as a beacon of traditional Abrahamic continuation, this tradition and embraced modernism, this led to excessive tolerance of modernism, contrary to the teachings of God. In Islam we have not heard of any council organized by Muslims to change our decisions to suit modernism never. And we ask the question, what do you think the future of religion is going to look like? Doesn't appear to be that the strength of the Catholic Church is there. It looks like it's fragmenting more and more by the minute. It doesn't look like the Orthodox side of Christianity is going to have the capability to grow and keep together a message at the level that the Catholic Church has. The difference between one group and the other is overwhelming, even though I have Orthodox friends that believe that they are the largest group. The fact of the matter is that it's a billion point one to a billion point two Catholics and then everybody else. I don't think it's going to be the Protestant Church because there is really no clear centralized position. As much as the Protestant Church has made an effort to bring these things together. And so and even though Islam also has some level of division is nowhere near what many other religions are going through our experiences. So that in one hand historically and based on the reality of both religions and asking the question of what do you think the future is going to look like. I come to that conclusion and I wanted to highlight it from that perspective. The second thing is like I said before, there were reasons even for my Muslim friends who I say this with a great deal of respect. You know, a lot of these relationships or a lot of these imitations were created or were actually done not so much to support what Islam stands for. As a matter of fact, I promise you my Muslim brothers and sisters that what you are going to experience is going to be the same level of dislike and maybe even hate that some people are having against Christianity right now, just because in reality they really don't like religion or embrace anything that would be connected to God. You know, I've been watching videos of this man's hypothesis on the growth of Islam and I can't help but feel that he's missing the point. He seemed to be overly fixated on the numbers game rather than considering the spiritual growth and development of the faith. I mean sure, numbers are important to some extent, but shouldn't we be more concerned about the quality of practice and the eradication of Islamic extremism? We need a focus on nurturing a deep connection with the teachings of Islam and promoting values of peace, love and tolerance. The goal should be fostering a thriving community that embodies the true spirit of Islam rather than merely chasing numbers on a demographic chart. Allah says in Surah Al-Inkabur, chapter 29 verse 45, Recite what has been revealed to you of the bulk and established prayer. Indeed, prayer prohibits immorality and wrongdoing and the remembrance of Allah is greater. And Allah knows that which you do. I was also fascinated by Surah Al-Baqarah chapter 2 verse 197. Allah says, and take provision, but indeed the best provision is taqwa that is piety. So fear me or you of understanding. So the taqwa is better than the numbers. That was the Sista Salallahu Alayhi Raiha. Until next time, remember to like, share and subscribe. Assalamualaikum.