The Juggling Entrepreneurs

These days, the tax gap is a significant issue that can have big effects on micro businesses like us.  The government would like nothing better than to implement more requirements on us.

Currently the tax gap is estimated at $353 billion.  Most of it is due to sole proprietors not reporting cash income accurately.  Some suggested solutions are:

• Requiring a business to fill out a 1099-Misc for every contractor they use.  Currently you are only required to do this for those that you do more than $600 in business with.
• Increase audits on small businesses.
• Breaking out income by cash, credit card, and check payments.
• Including a checkbox that states the business has complied and filed 1099-Misc forms for its contractors.

Source: NASE Washington Watch, “A Closer Look At Tax Gap Proposals,” February 22, 2007.

A business model represents how you do business.  A brick and mortar store’s model is that customers come into a store to purchase goods.

With the advent of the Internet, several “virtual business” models have developed.

Michael Rappa talks about them in “Business Models on the Web.“

If you publish an eNewsletter, you probably see the “plain text” box where you create your content and wonder if it is necessary to fill anything in there.

AWeber’s blog posting, “Who Cares About Plain Text?” , discusses the benefits of having a plain text version of your newsletters.

The two main reasons are:

1. Increased delivery success by navigating past the mail server’s spam filters.
2. Some subscribers prefer it or have email clients that do not render HTML correctly.