Tag: Social Security

Google Adsense Self Employed Taxes Helping You Know Your Responsibilities

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Estimated Tax Payments: If you are a sole proprietor, a partnership, or a shareholder in a Sub-chapter S corporation, you are considered self-employed. Since you don’t have an employer deducting taxes from your pay throughout the year, you are responsible for making advance payments of your estimated federal income tax. Estimated tax payments are due quarterly – on April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 – and are filed on a Form 1040-ES. At the end of the tax year, you will file a final Form 1040 with a Schedule C, which itemizes your business expenses for the whole year.

To avoid underpayment penalties – which are substantial – individuals whose adjusted gross incomes were under $150,000 need to have paid at least 100 percent of their prior year’s tax bill. People whose incomes were over $150,000 need to have paid 110 percent of the amount they owed in the prior year.

It’s in your interest to make your estimated tax payments during the year. This system also keeps you from owing a large sum of money all at once, which can be overwhelming. If your state of residence has income taxes, as most do, you will have to make estimated tax payments throughout the year for state taxes as well.

2. Self-Employment Tax: Your estimated tax payments will also include the federal self-employment tax – Social Security and Medicare. If you were employed by someone else, your employer would pay half of your Social Security and Medicare and the other half would come out of your paycheck. Self-employed people must pay the full amount themselves; however, 50 percent of the self employment tax is deductible on the 1040 form.

What if you are a salaried employee and you operate a home-based business as a sideline? In this case, you’ll be filing both the usual Form 1040 and a Schedule C for your home business deductions; you may also have to pay additional self-employment tax. No matter how little your sideline income is, you should be aware that it is subject to tax – although by taking advantage of the home-office deduction, you may find you owe little or no taxes.

3. Employment Taxes: Home-based workers who employ others must comply with many additional tax requirements. IRS Circular E, Employer’s Tax Guide, covers the federal regulations, and your state tax agency can inform you of state requirements for employers with regard to income, state unemployment, and workers’ compensation taxes.

If you employ your children or grandchildren, their earnings are deductible. Family businesses do not need to pay Social Security or unemployment taxes on minor children, and the children pay no income taxes on the first $3,000 of earned income. To substantiate this claim, keep time records of their work (the records will be more believable to the IRS if a non-relative keeps them), note the work done, and pay family at the rate you would pay a non-family member for the same work.

4. State and Local Taxes: Depending on where you live, you will face a variety of state and local tax requirements. All but nine states (Alaska, Wyoming, Nevada, Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Texas, and Washington) have state personal-income taxes. But even those may have taxes on business. For example, Florida levies an income tax on corporations. Some cities, like Kansas City, have earnings taxes apart from the state income tax; others have unusual taxes on business. New York, for example, taxes unincorporated busines

Where Can You Apply For Employment For Retirees

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Do you want to find employment for retirees? Has your income been reduced by the hits on the staggering economy?

Has the threat on Social Security and its future solvency caused you some sleepless nights? Whatever the motivation behind your decision to do so, you have been placed in an interesting position.

Are you up to the challenge?

During the years you spent working for your previous employer, or employers, can you recall all the times you day dreamed about doing some other kind of work than what you were doing at the time?

Own up to it! We all experienced these flights of fancy.

But you quickly dismissed those thoughts, didn’t you? You chased them away as futile things. Well, now is the time to dust off those ideas and take a hard look at them.

The modern day labor market is a vast, varied and fertile ground for anyone up to tilling the soil and planting new kinds of seeds.

This is not pie in the sky stuff! It is cold, hard reality.

The latest scientific studies have proven that older brains, like we seniors possess, are not empty chalk boards wiped clean of ideas.

The results of these studies solidly indicate that the mental capabilities of seniors have actually expanded in capacity.

What does this mean? It means my friend, that you are capable of new ideas, strategies and acquiring and expanding brand new skills and abilities.

Let me pose the question once more. Are you up to the challenge of plunging into the employment market in search of unfilled job ideas from your past?

Because if your answer is a resounding yes, then there is a sea of opportunities awaiting you.

In order to function, and thrive in the job market today, versatility is necessary. It is not only helpful, it is vital.

Employment for retirees has led to some interesting avenues of jobs for senior citizens.

A retired police officer is designing and building backyard tropical gardens and habitats for homeowners.

A retired criminal lawyer, a woman, is working in a bridal shop and arranging wedding gatherings for brides.

A retired army colonel is rebuilding old, classic automobiles for customers of an auto body shop.

A retired high school teacher, a man who gets around in a wheel chair, works as an instructor of physical fitness classes in a large weight training business.

What do these retirees teach us. The sky is the limit. Just because you are older in years does not mean that new things are beyond your grasp.

Look out over the labor market and spend some time picking out the types of work that interest you.

If you want to try your hand at a job that differs from what you have done in the past, do it. Remember, you do not have to go after a full time job if you want to just work part time.

Employment for retirees is a new and novel idea to some employers. They may have never even thought about the concept.

But if you approach them and demonstrate how it will actually benefit their business, you just might find yourself on the payroll for the effort.

Challenge yourself and write something new on your mental blackboard!

Tenant Screening Screening Your Next Rental Candidate

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There are tenants who damage your property, never clean, continue to disturb the neighborhood, and always late to pay the rent and still 4 out of 10 landlords don’t perform even basic credit checks on their rental candidates.

The minimum screening you as a landlord should do is a Credit Check. This tells you a lot about the candidate who wants to rent from you. The Credit Check will inform you how your candidate manages his money. You can see:

Credit card Balances
Number of Credit cards
Credit Cards Paid
Loans outstanding
Loans Paid
Collection Items
Credit Score

These items are important pieces that will create a profile of your rental candidate and then you choose the best profile from your candidates to achieve stable, reliable cash flow without the headaches that have plagued other landlords in the past.

Other checks you can perform are:

criminal background check
eviction history report
sex offender registry check

Checking with the rental candidates employer is another big step to verify their application information. Ask the employer to verify the information provided on the rental application: occupation, length of employment and, maybe you can verify the salary, stated on the rental application. Most employment checks get a verification of employment and thats all, but sometimes you may get information with the way its answered and sometimes you can get more from someone who is willing to share information on the candidate if the right questions are asked. Such as, Are they a key employee or Does their performance warrant future employment with your company? or Are they an outstanding employee?

If the rental candidate is self-employed, you should check the income as cash flow can vary month to month, you may ask for copies of income tax forms for the past 2 years, as well as bank statements for the most recent 6 month period. Then compare the applicant’s income to the annual needs to pay your rent.

If the rental candidate is unemployed, don’t dimiss them yet. First check the candidates bank account. If the rental candidate has enough money in the bank to last six months while looking for employment, you might still consider that rental candidate.

To help you feel more at ease, you can request the first 2 months’ rent in advance. However, if the rental candidate does not have the funds of support for more than 3 months, or the rental candidate lied about their employment on the rental application, continue to look at other rental candidates.

If a rental candidate lists other sources of income on the application such as alimony payments, Social Security or sales commissions, ask for records to back up the information. Either way, you should do a thorough screening that includes not only verifying employment, but also performing a credit check, talking with previous landlords and reviewing criminal, sex offender and terrorist records.

A complete and thorough rental candidate screening can save you many headaches in the long run.

It is difficult to verify a rental candidates financial information through the bank, as the banks have strict confidentiality laws and rules that often prevent them from giving out any information.

There are services offered by companies that do these checks for you. Many, if not all, can complete the checks requested using your computer via the internet almost immediately. These companies build a profile of the rental candidate through a report generated by the name, social security number and the permission of the candidate to execute the checks through their signature.

Your application should include a line for personal references. Then call each reference. By calling each reference of the rental candidate you may uncover other items of interest when making a decision.

Another reason to call is to ensure the rental candidate supplied you with real names and phone numbers of their references. So if you cant reach a reference because there is no answer or the phone is disconnected, then something is not right.

However, talking with good references could put your mind at ease when renting to the candidate. These people then provide you with contacts if your renter fails to pay rent, or skips out on the lease or gets into other trouble.

For more information or a specific service provider contact Rentmarkets.com where we provide candidates to the landlord for less.

Early Retirement Of Baby Boomers Is The Cure For High Unemployment

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The Federal Government Should Offer Early Retirement to Baby Boomers
by Spencer Holly, AngryCalifornian

Our current high unemployment rates are not due to lack of jobs, but, rather, to the fact that our employed workforce is too large, thanks, in part, to the Baby Boomer generation that is not ready to retire.

There are two basic ways to reduce unemployment. One, the conventional solution, is to increase the number of jobs available by somehow creating more jobs, and two, to somehow reduce the total number of currently employed workers in viable jobs; jobs that will need replacement workers. Either one, or a combination, will reduce the unemployment rate.

Creating jobs is good, but it takes too long; it takes many years, and there is no guarantee that there will ever be enough jobs.

Reducing the number of currently employed workers is never considered because, on its surface, it doesnt make sense because reducing the number of employed workers should mean that there is an increase in unemployed workers and the unemployment rate. But that is only true if the no longer employed worker needs to collect unemployment benefits, and seeks new employment.

If the not-employed workers did not collect benefits, and did not need to seek new employment, the effect would be to create new job openings. It is a mathematical fact that when employed workers drop out of the workforce, the unemployment rate must decrease

So, we need to reduce the employed workforce in order to reduce unemployment.

Obviously, we cannot reduce the workforce by decree, or by force. We want individuals to voluntarily leave their jobs, and drop out of the workforce. A simple, and effective way to induce workers to voluntarily vacate their jobs, and not collect unemployment payments, and not need to seek new employment, would be to offer early retirement to certain, older, individuals who are already near retirement, but are still holding on to their jobs until they reach age 65.

Under current Social Security rules, an individual may now retire at age 62, however, their benefits, and the monthly amount they receive is much less than if they wait until they reach the age of 65. We could induce older workers to retire early by offering them full Social Security benefits at age 62, instead of age 65, and effectively reduce the unemployment rate.

We would probably create more than one position per retiring individual, because older/experienced workers often possess knowledge and skills that make them efficient workers who are able to do the work of more than one inexperienced individual. It could easily take two or more new employees to handle the duties of a single retiring employee.

Employers would like this because it would reduce their payroll costs; they would be shedding the higher paid individuals in favor of lower paid individuals, and could quite possibly hire more than one new employee per retiring employee. And they could also see a reduction in their health insurance costs, and their workers compensation costs, because the younger workforce is healthier.

Instead of collecting unemployment payments, the now employed individuals would be paying income tax, and SSI & Medicare, etc.

And lets face it. The people who spend the most money in our culture are the young people with families to feed, and cloth, and house, etc, etc. The older crowd is through with that; quite possibly, their houses are paid for, and their kids our out of college, etc. They are spending their discretionary money on medications, and recreation, and vacations.

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Of course, there is an extra expense involved in paying the extra retirement monies, but that may be more than offset by the savings in not having to pay unemployment benefits, and the additional tax revenues paid by the hired workers, and the greater ripple effect their monies would have on the overall economy. (Employed people spend money and support the employment of other individuals).

From a quick search of the internet I found that during the first three years of the Baby Boomer generation, 1946, 1947, and 1948, there were an average of 3.66 million births EACH YEAR, in the U.S, for a total of about 11 million births.

Since the first baby boomers turned 62 in 2008, if all of those individuals were allowed to retire early, right now, we would create 3.66 million job openings, immediately, and then another 3.66 million jobs for EACH of the next two years.

(These are obviously high estimates, because, many of those born in those years surely have died already, and there may be some who won’t want to retire early).

According to current stats, there have been 3.6 million jobs lost in nonfarm occupations, since Dec of 2007.

(That number is certainly much higher, at this time).By changing the current retirement rules, we would almost immediately nullify all the jobs lost so far, and create up to an additional 3.66 million jobs for each subsequent year.

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I don’t really know the true cost of allowing individuals to retire early, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it costs an average of an additional $ 20,000 per year per individual, which is probably conservative. Remember, this additional amount is only a burden for three years per individual retiree, if they choose to retire at age 62. After that, at age 65, the additional amount would no longer be additional, but would be the normal amounts dues at age 65.

At $ 20,000 per individual, if 3.66 million additional people retire early each year, the total additional annual cost is 73.2 billion dollars.

From that 73.2 billion dollars, we need to deduct the savings in unemployment payments, because formerly unemployed people would now be employed.

We would lose the tax formerly received from the retiring individuals, but that would be offset by the employees who are now employed, and paying taxes. Plus we would gain much more revenue from the ripple effect of having more, and younger, people employed.

That 73.2 billion is a huge amount of money, but, we’ve reduced unemployment by 3.66 million people, and if those formerly unemployed, now employed, individuals pay ONLY $ 3,000.00 per year in Federal income taxes, SSI, etc, the total is 11 BILLION dollars PER YEAR, off the top.

We have already wasted 100s of billions of dollars on programs, such as the 700+ billion dollar TARP, that have not created a single job, so why not spend a fraction of that amount on a program that will actually work, and will actually create job openings, and reduce unemployment ?

If the early retirement program were in effect for just a few years, say 2008, 2009,2010, 2011, and assuming the program actually begins in 2009:

If we had this program in effect for the next three years, beginning in 2009, the maximum cost would be about 658.6 billion dollars:

Turned………………Cost……..Cost…….Cost…….Cost
Age 62………………2008…….2009…….2010…….2011
———-………………——-……..——-…….——–……——

2008…………………000………73.2……..73.2……..73.2
2009…………………000………73.2……..73.2……..73.2
2010…………………000……….000……..73.2……..73.2
2011…………………000……….000………000……..73.2
……………………….——………——……..——…….——–

Total…………………………….146.2…….219.6……292.8…..=……658.6 billion dollars

In reality, each year would be much less that 73.2 billion because the individuals would not be eligible to retire until they have attained the age of 62, which, for the population, would be distributed over the whole year.

In terms of jobs created, we could create almost 33 million job openings:

Turned………..Jobs……….Jobs………..Jobs………..Jobs
Age 62……….2008……….2009………..2010………..2011
———-……….——-……….——–……….——-………..——-

2008………….0000……….3.66…………3.66…………3.66
2009………….0000……….3.66…………3.66…………3.66
2010………….0000……….0000………..3.66…………3.66
2011………….0000……….0000………..0000………..3.66
………………..——-……….——-………..——-………..——-

Total………………………….7.32……….10.98………..14.64….=….32.92 million jobs

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In a couple years, we could actually have a labor shortage, and wages would be forced up, and, hence, tax revenues would also increase.

Even if my figures are off by 50%, we’ve still created 3.66 million jobs immediately, and 12.8 million
more job openings in subsequent years.

Another plus, is that the retired individuals are not going to live forever, and their numbers will decrease steadily with each year, decreasing the over all cost.

On it’s surface, this kind sounds like a crack-pot idea, but……. maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do some serious number crunching on this one…

And that is just my opinion.

Spencer Holly, AngryCalifornian
AC20090515007
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Working In Spain, Hours And Holiday Pay

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If you Work in Spain you will enjoy a strict protection of your rights, all your rights are detailed in your contract. You should therefore make sure you are provided with a legal contract (in fact it is illegal to work without one, and those caught doing so will be deported back to their home country). Work contracts will be provided in Spanish and it is advisable to have it translated.

The two main contracts are:
# Indefinite term contract
# Fixed term contract

Generally most work contracts are different because it depends on the type of work you are carrying out for each individual company. Most contracts allow for a siesta period between 14.00 and 17.00 in the afternoon.

Mainly one year contracts are provided with 14 or 15 monthly payments including extra pay at Easter and Christmas. Standard practice is to give an extra vacation payment in August.

At the termination of a contract, depending upon the length of employment, employees may generally be granted a severance payment, which is related to the length of employment and wage.

Should you be unhappy and feel that your contract has been wrongfully terminated, you are entitled to present a demand for conciliation within 20 days. The outcome is reliant on the agreement between the parties. If no agreement is reached, you may place a suit before the Labour Court (Juzgado de lo Social) within 20 days. If the court finds in your favour, you will receive 45 days compensation for every year of your employment. If you remain unsatisfied, you have five days to file for recourse.

Cost of living and Quality of life (vida)
You have to bear in mind that wages tend to be lower in Spain but the living costs are relative to what you earn, when compared to the UK where living costs and the standard of living is considerably higher. Spain does enforce a minimum wage, which from July 2004 was set at 15.35 euros per day, or 490 euros per month.

Working hours and holidays
The Spanish have a standard working week consisting of 40 hours, with overtime this can reach 43 hours. The normal working day includes a two or three hour afternoon siesta and a later finishing time. In the summer months working hours may change. There are no scheduled coffee or tea breaks, but employees take these around their working schedule.

Overtime is not compulsory in Spain but can never exceed 80 hours a year. Overtime should be paid at the normal rate plus a minimum of 75% of the normal hourly rate. Time off may be given in lieu of overtime but there must be a written agreement beforehand.

If you are a full time employee you will be entitled to one month’s paid annual holiday (20 days) and a minimum of one and half days off per month. Spain has 14 national and local paid public holidays a year. If your holiday falls on a weekend, another day is not usually granted unless the number of public holdiays that falls below a certain number. It is advisable to check with your employer what the allowances are in your workplace.

Benefits of working in Spain
The employer deducts all the employment taxes and Social Security contributions and pays them directly to the official offices. Deductions come to around 8.4%, which breaks down to 2% IRPF (tax) and 6.4% Social Security contributions. Fringe benefits for contracted employees include health coverage under social security, workmen’s compensation, unemployment and retirement.