Author: blogger

Fixing The House Or Breaking The Law The Scoop On Hiring An Illegal Maid

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An illegal immigrant is a person who has crossed a national border in any manner that violates the laws of immigration. People do this for a variety of reasons. Some feel this is their way out of poverty. They come to the United States to look for work. You may come across someone like this who seems to need your help. Perhaps you are looking for an affordable way to keep your home clean. You may consider the possibility of hiring an illegal immigrant as a maid. In that scenario, it would seem that both parties have something to gain.

Is it Wrong to Hire an Illegal Immigrant Maid?

On one hand, seeing a person in a desperate situation can naturally make a person want to help. The person may be very nice and just in a bad predicament. Your job offer could help feed this person’s family. Another reason people may wish to hire an illegal immigrant as a maid is to possibly get the labor for a lower amount than they would normally pay, because an illegal immigrant will not report them for substandard pay due to having an illegal status.

On the other hand, when considering whether or not to hire an illegal immigrant maid, it is important to remember that there are consequences that can go along with offering that help. Consider the fact that if you do, you could possibly be charged with a felony.

An alternative does exist in encouraging this person to apply for the guest worker program, which, if approved, would allow an illegal immigrant to remain legally employed without the risk of deportation. The guest worker program is a way for illegal immigrants to temporarily remain in the U.S. for employment purposes. Qualifying for the guest worker program will take away the risk of deportation.

Legalities

As mentioned on FairUS.org, knowingly encouraging or harboring an illegal alien, by assisting him or her in finding work or by providing employment, is a violation of federal law. Employment is defined as any service or labor. Is a maid considered an employee? The answer is not simple. Some may consider maid services to be domestic services.

According to The Boston Globe, a border protection chief is facing criminal charges for hiring illegal immigrants as maids. Perhaps a solution for him before hiring these maids could have been to encourage the illegal immigrants to apply for the guest worker program. If they had been approved, they could have been legally employed by him.

When S Corporations Make Tax-sense For Real Estate Investors

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Accountants and lawyers sometimes joke that there’s an eleventh commandment, “Thou shall not use corporations to invest in real estate.” And for good reason. Real estate loses many of its tax benefits when you invest through or inside a corporation.

In a handful of cases, however, a special sort of corporation– a subchapter S corporation–may be useful for real estate investors, as discussed below…

S Corporations Work Well for Real Estate Flippers

One situation where an S corporation works well is flipping.

If someone regularly flips real estate, profits and losses are not treated as capital gains or capital losses. Rather, profits and losses are treated as ordinary income and loss.

That “ordinary” treatment isn’t all bad. For example, while ordinary income never gets taxed using the low capital gains rates (which is bad), an ordinary loss unlike a capital loss can easily be used to offset other income (which is good).

However, “ordinary” treatment creates a trap for real estate flippers. Ordinary income is subject not just to income taxes–but also to self-employment taxes. Specifically, in addition to any income taxes a real estate flipper pays on his or her profits, a flipper also pays a 15.3% self-employment tax on roughly the first $100,000 of annual profit and a 2.9% self-employment tax on anything over $100,000 in annual profit.

For example, a house flipper that makes $100,000 in some year pays not only income taxes but also a 15.3% self-employment tax, or roughly $15,000.

An S corporation, however, offers up a loophole. In an S corporation, only that portion of the profit that gets paid out as designated wages gets subjected to the employment tax.

Suppose, for example, someone flipping houses operates as an S corp, earns $100,000 in profit, but pays only $50,000 of this profit out as wages (and then the remaining $50,000 as a shareholder “dividend”). In this case, the employment tax equals 15.3% of the $50,000 of wages, or roughly $7500. And the S corporation therefore saves the real estate investor about $7500.

S Corporations Work Well for Rehabbers

And there’s a related group of real estate investors for whom an S corporation works, too.

If you’re someone who’s buying fixers, making substantial improvements, and then re-selling, there’s a good chance that your real estate activities are considered an active trade or business (which means ordinary income treatment and self-employment taxes).

Accordingly, rehabbers may be able to use an S corporation to save on employment taxes, too, just like flippers do.

A quick digression: If you’re confused about why flipping or rehab-ing houses is treated as an active trade or business and subject to self-employment taxes, consider the cases of a retailer or a home builder. A retailer selling, for example, furniture does not get to call his profit capital gain. And a home builder constructing spec homes does not get to call his profit capital gain.

From the point of the tax laws, a flipper is just a “retailer” whose inventory consists of houses. And a rehabber is sort of a home builder.

S Corporations For Property Management Activities

One other S corporation opportunity exists for real estate investors. Specifically, passive real estate investors may sometimes benefit by setting up an S corporation to perform property management for their real estate. This S corporation then employs the real estate investor to do the work of managing, the properties.

A property management S corporation sometimes makes sense because the S corporation allows the real estate investor to accrue social security benefits and because the S corporation, by creating earned income for the real estate investor, also lets the investor provide him- or herself with tax-free fringe benefits like a retirement plan or health insurance.

A real estate investor with, for example, several rentals might form a property management S corporation, pay a reasonable salary, and then get tax-free health insurance and a 401(k). These sorts of tax-free fringe benefits could save a family $5,000 to $10,000 a year in taxes.

Note: Setting up an S corporation for property management purposes can be tricky. While real estate investors tend to be a do-it-yourself bunch, for an S corporation, you probably want to get expert help from a knowledgeable CPA, tax attorney or enrolled agent.

What Kind Of Employment For Senior Citizens Is Available

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Is employment for senior citizens available for men and women, and are there any age qualifications to meet? Does a senior have to be in top physical condition, or are infirmities allowed?

Are your carefully laid plans for a pleasant tour, although perhaps not royal, through your golden years seem to be stalling? Will employment for senior citizens be the answer to your dilemma?

You are not alone? The same feeling is infecting your senior citizen neighbor next door, your sixtyish friend down at the retirement center, your old buddy in the bowling league and your aging sister in Buffalo.

The truth is, you have options! We all do. Too often, we seniors tend to feel betrayed by our government and left to fend for ourselves at the mercy of an indifferent panicking society. Scrub away those thoughts!

You are no different than the forty old accountant that was cut loose by his business firm, or the thirty five year old new car salesman who is left to his own devices.

You are just older than them, but you have a lot more going for you than they do. Most of their experiences and trained talents and skills are still down the road in front of them. Yours are spread out in a panorama behind you.

Look back at your life. Now is the best of times for you to make the things you have learned over the years put you up in front of the growing crowd of employment seekers.

If you were to write down all you have experienced, dealt with, learned from, overcame, and grown from, it would fill an entire library shelf.

Don’t you think that from all of this knowledge and living you can find some things that would increase the performance and productivity of an employers business.

Don’t you realize that the sum of all your hands on training and acquired talents and skills would be of great value to some employer?

There are wheelbarrow loads of gold nuggets kicking around in your head, my friend. Grab hold of a few of them and transform them into that perfect job you are now dreaming about.

It is not as hard to accomplish this as you may think!

Here is a valuable gem of knowledge and fact that should stir up the juices inside of you.
Most vacant employment positions are not even advertised!

Whoa! What does this tell you?

There is no competition for these jobs outside of word of mouth. Why? There are many reasons why this is so.

Maybe the job has not been defined by the manager yet, he knows that the need exists but what will he call it? You can step in and give him a definition. Do some advance homework.

A harried business owner is overworked and wishing for a fairy godmother to wave her wand and provide the perfect assistant. Check out the company and tell him how much easier you can make his life, and earn him more profit as a byproduct.

You read an item in the newspaper, or saw it on the TV news, about a business making substantial growth spurts. That is your cue!

Call the company and inform them all the things you can do for them, and let them know you will be stopping by tomorrow, would he or she have time to spend a few moments with you.

Where can you look for employment for senior citizens? In your own head! Take advantage of your own experience and skills.

There are jobs out there waiting for you. Be creative and bold. It
will happen!

Creating Online Employment Portal For Laborers

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With the advent of social media, more online portals have sprung up which address different causes and interests. Recently, a team of alumni from a very famous Institute of Mass Communication and Media Technology have formed an online portal to provide employment opportunities to a large number of laborers, like gardeners, plumbers, mechanics, security guards etc.

This alumni online portal for laborers comprises of some students of current batch of the institute and its former students with a mission to provide employment opportunities to the poor or needy people.

People in search of workers can log on to this portal and can get access to a database of thousands of skilled and unskilled workers. It is a common platform for both the workers and the employers to achieve their objective. The portal aims to provide complete details of the workers to the employers, like name of the worker, contact number and the skill he or she is trained in.

The portal which was formed by a handful of batch mates of the institute, now boasts of a large strength mainly comprising students and professionals from various institutes and companies. The alumni portal which was created for blue collar workers had been developed on Viburnix. Viburnix, a robust platform which is not only armed with some very good alumni features like social & professional collaboration, event management but also displays brand building features.

Saviance has designed this alumni software keeping in mind the basic requirements of a network which considers mainly, how to communicate, collaborate, socialize, control and give back. Viburnix provides all the tools that an online platform needs to keep its members engaged and connected with each other.

Viburnix has a slew of alumni features with which members can perform a number of functions like creating groups and sub groups, running discussions, email campaigns, event management, advanced alumni directory etc. It assists organizations in providing all the tools they need to run their network efficiently.

Viburnix is an alumni online portal where members can collaborate and contribute to each others success. It provides compatible features with cutting-edge technology and helps these institutions to maintain valuable relationships with their members.
It is a brand building software which not only serves your communitys needs but also adds great value to your network. It gives a mission to your cause by collaborating with people across the globe through its various communication channels like blogs, forums and discussion boards etc. It also offers reliable revenue streams and high-quality education programs and services for the members.

Organizations and institutes worldwide have widely acclaimed Viburnix as one of the best software for managing online networks and running online communities effectively. It helps its members to exchange views, enable communication and control the processes through their different programs and initiatives which run successfully on this platform.

The Perks Of Hiring A Professional Employer Organization In New Orleans

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A professional employer organization is basically just a type of payroll service company that attends to the needs of understaffed and overburdened companies. But it is distinct to other categories within the industry so consumers have to be vigilant when it comes to orienting themselves to the differences. A PEO firm that actually takes on employee management tasks aside from payroll computation such as recruitment, risk/safety management, training and development as well as compensation distribution. As such, it comes off as an employer on record and of record as far as tax and insurance goes.

The services a professional employer organization New Orleans provides is also known as co-employment. And clients avail of their assistance because they relieve the company of having to worry about the obligations as well as consequences of controlling a significant number of manpower. Now, one may find PEOs willing to shoulder tax and insurance expenses in behalf of a big company when they are merely employed by it. But the fact of the matter is PEOs are usually able to acquire insurance coverage at lower costs. This is because they negotiate on their behalf but affect the employees of the conglomerates they serve. It is sneaky, yes. But it can be considered legal because as earlier said, their services are a form of co-employment. The same goes for taxation.

But essentially, companies dont just hire payroll service firms like these to escape the staggering expenses of employing people. They do so because these entities do a pretty good job when it comes to preparing and filing payroll, administering benefits and reducing liabilities as well as mistakes. Of course, given their valuable role in the business, professional employer organization New Orleans typically charge3% to 15% of the total payroll they handle, which could amount to thousands, even millions of dollars, depending on the size of their client company. But of course, their market is generally composed only of small and medium enterprises since these are the only ones who are open to the idea of co-employment.

There are currently 700 PEOs in the United States, operating in all 50 states and covering about 2 to 3 million workers. And they are also present in countries such as Sweden and Germany. If you have about 50 employees and are looking to save on benefits and taxation costs, you should start scouting quotes from PEOs in your area so you could determine whether or not it is the best solution you could pursue. It would be smart to ask for feedback from other companies who are also availing of the service so you do not make any rookie mistakes when it comes to hiring a professional employer organization in New Orleans or in any other city for that matter. And naturally, you should also run a background check on all your potential candidates so you could confirm whether or not their experience and claims are valid. If you are having second thoughts, take advantage of trial agreements these entities provide so you could have an actual basis for making your final decision.