Archive for April, 2007

If you like top-level business market strategy, check out this short New York Times interview with Intuit’s Stephen Bennett. In an age of meaningless corporate PR-speak, this seems refreshingly frank.

He discusses how Intuit has two one-billion dollar revenue streams: small business (QuickBooks, Quicken) and consumer tax (TurboTax). Now it’s trying to grow two more, possibly in online banking and health care expense management. The first one seems like a natural extension. But health care expense management? That surprised me, because I didn’t see it as an obvious next step for Intuit. A good lesson for any entrepreneur: what’s the next, unobvious but related step toward diversification?

How’d you do?

For 2006…

1. My returns are done.
2. I wasn’t surprised.
3. I didn’t leave money on the table – I used the tax shelters that were right for me and my business.

For 2007…

4. I’m on top of this year’s estimated tax payments.
5. I’ve done preliminary tax planning with my CPA.
6. Getting the books to tax this year wasn’t that big a deal.

If your business needs to file an Alameda County (California) 571L property tax return, don’t be alarmed by the April 1st due date on the form. There’s no penalty if you file by May 7th. It’s a strange tax return in other ways, too, like its name: they say it’s an assessment on “business personal property” which is accounting-speak for business assets like equipment but not land/real estate. And then there’s the fact that you file the return, wait, and they send you a letter telling you how much you owe. To top it all off, we’ve had County staff tell us, “Your client needs to file a return if they have more than $100,000 in fixed assets. If they have less than $100,000 in fixed assets and the County contacts them to file a return, they also have to file, but if the County doesn’t contact them, they don’t have to file.” No awards for clarity here!

Recently I wrote about 10 reasons to try QuickBooks Online Edition, but it does have its limitations. For instance, its merchant card service doesn’t let your customers pay by credit card without your involvement. You have to manually enter their credit card information into QuickBooks Online. I’m assuming (hoping?) Intuit will make QuickBooks Online merchant card service like QuickBooks Desktop: customers can click on the invoice you e-mail them and pay you via a secure site without giving you any of their credit card data. This is one of those software nuances that might not sound like much but makes a big difference when you’re using it day-to-day, so we mention it when helping clients figure out which version of QuickBooks to use.

If you’re short on cash and can’t pay your taxes, file your return or an extension anyway: you’ll still be penalized for paying late but you won’t be penalized for filing late, which carries a very steep penalty (read: 5% per month). Click here for more info.