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an expert can easily help you file for typical costs associated with setting up a business.
Nowadays, getting locked out of your Facebook account often means losing access to your Spotify, Tinder, or any of the other sites you can sign into through Facebook. The amount of personal data social media has access to grows all the time, and it can affect your private and professional network. Thankfully, a few tech CEOs, such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, believe social media decentralization could give users greater control over their personal information. Social media decentralization was once a pipe dream for activists, but Dorsey has recently revealed his hopes for redesigning his social media software to put the power back in the users’ hands. Zuckerberg also admitted in a Harvard interview that decentralized software is “quite attractive.” Keep inmind that there are certain conditions for accounting things like business meals. You can only deduct 50% of the cost from regular meals, while you can deduct 100% fromoffice parties. While it may take extra time to calculate every deductible, tax software canmake it easy. It’s in your best interest to take no shortcuts. All these small savings can put more money in your pocket for the upcoming quarter. DON’T SELL UNUSED PROPERTY Do you have old equipment that’s not providing ROI to the business anymore? You should weigh your options. Donating it, so long as you’ve owned it for over a year, is fully deductible. Selling it wouldmake it a capital loss, which is not deductible. Find your property classification under Section 1231 of the federal tax code to help you determine the largest savings option. DEDUCT STARTUP COSTS As long as you created your business, any expenses tied to starting your company can be deducted up to $5,000 along with up to $5,000 in organizational costs—but only if your total startup costs are $50,000 or less. Tax software or
nearly impossible to audit or manage, which makes falsified information and propaganda infamously easy to pass around. This anarchy also makes it much easier to conceal illegal activity. In an age where identity theft, financial fraud, and selling user information are more digital than ever, it’s important that users and businesses alike have full confidence in the security of their online pages where clients interact with them— especially if information, goods, or services are exchanged. A decentralized system could split the massive, unregulated wilderness of Facebook and Twitter into user-managed “neighborhoods.” Rather than relying on one centralized server that holds over 2.45 billion users, businesses and individuals could host their information on their own computer. This would give businesses and individuals much greater control over their information and how they share it. SPENDMONEY TO SAVE MONEY Within the right profit margin, spendingmoney on your business can reduce your taxes to zero. It’s not news tomost entrepreneurs, but the more you spend on the business, the more tax deductions you earn. Don’t spend $10 to save $3, but don’t be too stringent on savings; keep inmind that buying new equipment, hiring new employees, creating an advertising campaign, andmore can lead to cheaper taxes. TRACK CARRYOVER TAX DEDUCTIONS Don’t forget to keep tabs on past capital losses, net operating losses, home office deductions, or large charitable donations. If these deductions aren’t fully used in one year, they can carry over and apply to the next. REMEMBER THE TAX CUTS AND JOBS ACT OF 2018 While this act did cut out deductibles available in previous years, such as travel expenses, you can still benefit from the change inmany ways. If you
file as a pass-through entity for your business, youmay already be aware that your standard deduction has been doubled. This can even mitigate the benefit of keeping track of your receipts if your spending was modest in the past year. However, this is only if your business taxes are filed individually. Be sure to double-check the recent changes before filing tomake the most of your deductions. Without spending any extra money, you can track all your deductibles and tie any personal income or home office expenses to your business to save as a small-business owner. If you do spend extra money—with tactful awareness of the profit margin—you can still make your tax season easier and less stressful.
BREAKING DOWN FACEBOOK What Is ‘Decentralization’ and How Will It Change Social Media?
That’s not to say there aren’t risks associated with decentralization. If unprepared, private hosts could be left defenseless against hackers. Some critics even suggest that a push to decentralize could just be an attempt by Twitter and Facebook to dodge responsibility by moving data off of their own servers. While decentralization offers solutions to some of the problems of social media, it’s an approach that requires cautious implementation. Only time will tell if decentralization’s benefits outweigh its risks.
Currently, Facebook and Twitter live in relative anarchy. Their sheer size makes them
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