About a month and a half ago, immediately after President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, I posted this blog entry, entitled “How the Stimulus Plan Benefits Small Business.” Most of the information in that post came from a NY Times article setting forth the various benefits to small businesses. (more…)
New companies often want to classify any new workers as independent contractors instead of employees, in order to limit the company’s costs. Costs attributable to hiring and retaining employees can be quite substantial and include workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance tax, social security tax and withholding and local payroll taxes. Simply calling a worker an independent contractor, even in a signed, written contract, does not, however, mean that the law will recognize the worker as such. (more…)
Pending right now in Congress, as part of H.R. 1552, The Small Business Formation and Job Creation Act, is a proposal to increase the current tax deduction for new small businesses from $5,000 to $20,000. For more on this piece of legislation, click here, a link to the site of the National Federation of Independent Business. (more…)
This afternoon I diligently sat through the 2008 year in review seminar of trademark and copyright law for Oregon lawyers. (As lawyer seminars go, this one is actually slightly tolerable.) One of the most interesting subjects discussed was the ongoing proposal to expand the Internet via the creation of new top level domains (TLDs) by ICANN. (more…)
By way of Twitter, I just came across this great little post about the perils of starting up a company with a friend. The sage advice in the article could be written for any company having more than one owner. As a former corporate law professor used to say, “Starting a business is like getting married: everybody only sees the roses.” Yes, a bit cynical, but often sadly true.
It sounds obvious, I admit. But it’s an important rule to remember. Trusting the other company comes from doing enough background research — you could call it “background due diligence,” I suppose. Back in law school, I remember this rule often being repeated by professors. These days it pops into my head more often, and it’s a rule that businesses must abide by. In more dire economic times (now), businesses need to be especially cautious and engage in more diligent background research, especially if conducting business with a company for the first time. (more…)