<h3>Getting Your W-2 From The IRS</h3>

Your W-2 is first sent to the Social Security Administration (SSA), where it is processed in anticipation of your federal tax filing. After the SSA is done processing your W-2, it is then sent to the IRS. You can get a free copy of your <a href=”https://www.irs.gov/faqs/irs-procedures/copies-transcripts/transcript-or-copy-of-form-w-2″>current year’s W-2 from the IRS</a> after July of that year if you fill out the proper form and send it back to the IRS.

If you need your W-2 from previous years, then you can fill out the form and send it back to the IRS. But this will only apply to people who sent in their paper W-2 with their federal income tax filing. If you did not send in a paper W-2 with your filing, then you can fill out a form to get a summary of your tax filing to the IRS which will include your W-2 information, but not your actual W-2.

<h3>Getting Your W-2 From The Social Security (SSA) Administration</h3>

The <a href=”https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/3836/How-can-I-get-a-copy-of-my-wage-and-tax-statements-Form”>SSA can provide you with a copy of your current year’s W-2</a> for free, provided you need it for a Social Security related issue. The SSA considers the primary non-Social Security related issues to be:

<ul>
<li>Needed to file your current year’s tax return</li>
<li>Confirming residency</li>
<li>Establishing income for a workers’ compensation incident</li>
<li>Establishing access to a pension fund</li>
</ul>

If you are trying to establish a Social Security claim or are filing papers for other Social Security related reasons, then you can get your W-2 for free. If you are trying to get your W-2 for non-social security related reasons, then the fee as of 2018 for one W-2 is $86.00.

The easiest way to get your current year’s W-2 is to get it through your employer. Some employers offer secure websites where employees can access their W-2 forms whenever they want, while other companies still prefer to mail out one copy in January. If you need your W-2 form and cannot get a copy from your employer, then there are ways you can get your W-2 for free online.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Where To Get Your MVR

Each state has different rules regarding your MVR, but each state offers the same ways for getting a copy of your driving record. You can receive your MVR from any of the following organizations within your state:

• Department of Motor Vehicles
• Office of the Secretary of State
• State Department of Revenue
• Department of Public Safety
• Motor Vehicle Division (if your state has one)

Each department should have its own website or have a link from the main state website where you can find the information you need to get a copy of your MVR.

Getting Your MVR For Free

The truth is that every state charges a small fee to get a copy of your MVR. The fees vary based on the state, but they generally fall under $20.00 per MVR. Many states charge a fee that is less than $10.00. The cheapest way to get your MVR would be directly from your state agency. A good place to start in every state is with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Subscription Services

There are companies that offer subscription services to provide MVRs for a monthly fee. If you are an individual looking for your own MVR, then these types of services are not going to be a good investment. But if you run a company that does background checks which include MVRs, then a subscription service could be a good choice.

If you choose to use a subscription service, then be sure to check out the service before you sign up for it. Some services offer less than reliable results and others have been known to try and steal your personal information. If you can find the right service, it can be a great benefit for you.

There can be instances where having a copy of your driver’s license can be a great help. If you own a company, then you might need to do regular background checks on potential employees that would include driver’s records. While you cannot get a driver’s record for free, you can get them directly from your state agency for a very low cost.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Collecting Data

The initial phase of a case study involves collecting all of the data relative to the problem at hand. There should only be one problem per case study, but there should be at least three to five issues discussed about that problem. Information such as who was directly and indirectly responsible for the problem should be discussed, and the impact of the problem on the company should also be considered.

Introduction

The first section of the actual case study is the introduction. This is where the problem being discussed is laid out in detail and its immediate effect is also recognize. The remainder of the introduction discusses what the case study will attempt to prove and the kind of information it will offer.

Background Information

The background information gives all of the details associated with the problem including all relevant data and any eyewitness accounts. This section is meant to give legitimacy to the rest of the case study by showing that great pains went into collecting all of the necessary details to do a comprehensive and accurate report.

Initial Reaction

This section discusses the company’s reaction to the problem and any alternative reactions that could have been used as well. The alternatives are discussed in detail as well as the reasons why the alternatives were rejected and the solution that was used was put into action.

Solution

This section will discuss the one solution that is being put forth as the best and will explain the reasons why this solution is being recommended. There needs to be citations with real data, affidavits of personal experience and any and all information that was used to come to this conclusion.

Final Recommendations

This section explains what the effects of the proposed solution will be on the company and what the company can expect when the solution is implemented. Everything from reaction by employees to the effect on the company’s public image are discussed in detail in this section.

When a company encounters an issue, it documents that issue and the solution that was used to solve the issue in a case study. The information gathered to complete a case study not only helps the company to understand why the problem occurred, but it also helps the company to understand how various reactions to situations affect the company’s overall operations.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Attendees:

In the attendees section, you would list every attendee who was present and those that were absent. The members that were present will be listed along with their title or department in parenthesis. There will be a second category titled “Absent” that will list all attendees who were listed on the original agenda but did not attend. Titles or departments for missing meeting attendees are optional.

Others:

Sometimes attendees are given permission to bring guests to the meeting. Those guests, along with their company name and title, would be listed here.

Meeting Proceedings:

This is where all of the agenda items are listed and the discussion pertaining to each individual item is noted. This section starts with a note of who opened the meeting and at what time of the day. If this is a regular meeting, such as a board of directors meeting, then it would be noted at the beginning of this section that the minutes from the previous meeting were read and ratified by the group.

Each agenda topic is a subheading in this section, and summary notes are offered to describe the discussion that took place on each topic. It is customary for the notes to indicate who made the statements that were being put into the minutes, and any motions pertaining to each subheading can be noted and logged.

Other Business:

It is normal for meetings to discuss topics not included on the agenda, and those topics are listed under this heading. Each topic discussed is given its own subheading, and the discussion is logged just as it is in the body of the standard minutes.

It is rare that topics of significance are raised in this section. If the meeting chairperson feels that a topic is too significant to cover in this part of the minutes, then a note will be made to organize a separate meeting for that subject.

Meeting Assessment:

This section is reserved for the chairperson’s assessment as to how the meeting was conducted. If the meeting runs long for unacceptable reasons, then that will be noted here. Attendees that chose to not be respectful of the rest of the group are noted in this section along with a summary of their actions.

Meeting Adjourned:

The exact time of the meeting adjournment is noted. If the meeting covered more than one day, then the date of the adjournment is also noted.

Submitted By:

The secretary who created the minutes is identified in this section, but their signature or title is not normally necessary.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Cash notes take time to show a profit, and for that reason most individual cash note holders prefer to sell their notes rather than wait for them to become profitable. The people who buy these notes are organizations or individual investors who do have the time to wait for the notes to turn a profit. The person who facilitates the sale of cash notes from note holders to investors gets a commission, and that person can be you.

Finding Cash Notes – Research

There are several ways to find cash notes, and one of the more labor intensive methods is to research mortgage holders. You can go to your town or county office building and research properties sold using private lenders. These are usually cash notes, and you will need to write down the property address, note holder and the note holders address.

Finding Cash Notes – Advertising

If you want a steady flow of cash notes, then you will need to advertise. You can put up telephone pole flyers all over your area telling people you buy cash notes and include your phone number. You can advertise online, you can advertise in local real estate magazines and you can advertise in the local newspapers.

Finding Cash Notes – Networking

Real estate agents, mortgage brokers and escrow agents all deal with cash notes and can be excellent sources of leads. You should spend time making contact with these different professionals and make them part of your contact network.

Weeding Out Bad Notes

Any notes secured with liens or notes where the balance remaining is still close to the total amount are not going to make you any money. You want notes that are clean of liens and have a considerable amount of equity.

Establishing The Investment

Once you have your list narrowed down to the best notes, you need to hire a real estate agent to help establish the values of the properties you are considering. Any properties that have appreciated in value since the note was written will be very appealing to investors.

Send Out The Contact Letter

Once you know which notes you want, you send out a contact letter to the note holder explaining that you would like permission to sell the note. You do not actually buy the notes. You are the person who brings the seller and buyer together. You have an attorney write up a contract that states the value of the sale, which would include your commission, and then you facilitate the legal closing of the deal.

Since you do not actually buy the notes, you can start this kind of business with very little money. It can take time to build up a profitable business, but it can also be a great way to get your own company off the ground.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Do A Call Trace

If you are trying to find a restricted number because of harassing phone calls, then you can contact your phone company and ask that a trace be put on your phone. Once the restricted number calls you, you hang up and dial *57 to initiate the trace. The phone company will charge you for each trace, but you cannot receive the results directly. The results of a phone trace can only be sent to courts or legal authorities.

Look At Your Phone Bill

While a call might show up as restricted on your caller ID, there is a chance that the phone company will still print the number on your next phone bill. When you get a restricted call, you need to write down the exact date and time the call was received. When you get your bill, take a look at the entry for that time and see if the number is listed.

Contact Your Carrier

Some phone companies will offer to give you a restricted number if you can provide a good reason for doing so. Threatening phone calls or obscene calls can often be revealed immediately through the phone company’s network, and the company can choose to release that information to you directly.

Set Your Phone To Reject Restricted Calls

Contact your phone service carrier and ask how you can put a block on your phone to reject restricted numbers. Most services will give you a set of numbers you key into your phone to turn the blocking service on and off, while others have to turn it on and off for you. Once the block is in place, a caller will have to press a series of numbers on their phone to allow their call to go through to you. Once the caller presses that sequence of numbers, their phone number will show up on your caller ID.

Ask The Caller

Some people do not realize that their number shows up as restricted on caller ID. Sometimes, all you have to do to get a restricted phone number is ask the caller for their phone number.

There are many reasons why people and companies use unlisted, or restricted, phone numbers. If you are having problems with callers who use restricted phone numbers, then there are plenty of ways you can use to get that phone number and put an end to the harassment.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Usable Square Feet

Usable square feet is that part of your commercial rental space that only you will be using. It would include your office space, conference room, break room, rest rooms and any other part of a building that only your company can use. If you are renting an entire building, then all of the square footage is considered usable. This is an important distinction that we will discuss later.

Rentable Square Feet

The part of an office complex that your company uses in conjunction with the rest of the tenants in the building is called the common area. Commercial property owners use various complex mathematical formulas to calculate common area and you should try to understand those calculations as much as possible. The common area combined with the usable square feet is called the rentable square feet.

Calculating Commercial Rent Per Square Foot

Most commercial property owners have one rate for usable square feet and a separate and lower rate for common areas. The rentable square feet is rarely used to calculate the monthly rent. Instead, the formula for monthly commercial rent is:

Commercial Rent For An Entire Space Per Month = (usable square feet x usable square feet rate per month) + (common area x common area rate per month)

Factors That Affect Rates

Commercial real estate is graded on a scale of A to D, with A being the best properties and D being the least desirable. Most commercial property owners will set rates depending on the length of the lease and the grade of the property. Commercial tenants will find that the longer the lease is they are willing to sign, the lower their overall commercial rent per square foot will be.

Common Space In Single Units

Earlier we mentioned the conditions of a lease if the tenant is renting an entire building. The rental rate for common areas is often much lower than the rate for usable square feet. When a tenant rents an entire building, they are often charged only the usable square foot rate for the entire property because no other tenants will be using what would be considered common areas. This is just one reason why many companies prefer to rent space in larger complexes.

As a business owner, you need to understand the basics of calculating commercial rent per month if you want to be sure you are getting a good deal. By understanding the difference between usable and common space, you can save your company money on commercial rent each and every month.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Yield To Maturity

Since bonds are long-term investments, most investors use yield to maturity (YTM) to establish a more accurate idea of the return they will get. The YTM shows how much the bond will yield if it is allowed to go to maturity and all payments are made.

To calculate the actual YTM, you would have to use a long formula that does an individual calculation for each year and then brings those numbers together into one percentage. But financial experts have created an approximate YTM formula that is widely used throughout the financial industry. That formula is:

Approximate YTM = (Monthly Payment + (Face Value – Price Paid) / Full Term)) / ((Face Value + Price Paid) / 2)

If we had an annual payment of $5.00 for the bond example we used earlier, the formula would be:

($5.00 + ($50.00 – $38.90) / 10)) / ((50.00 + 38.90) / 2) = 13.74 percent.

The YTM is much higher than the current yield because the YTM takes into account the entire yield of the bond. The YTM also shows the real reward for being able to buy a bond at such a discount off of its face value.

Why Use YTM?

The YTM takes into account price fluctuations and changes in interest income over the full life of the bond. The long-term nature of a bond investment makes calculating annual returns misleading. When an investor chooses to reinvest their interest back into their bond each year, which most do, then the annual calculations become unreliable.

For a bond, the face value is not going to change throughout its life. A bond can be a very steady and reliable investment, but investors always want to see how their money will do in the future based on current projections. The YTM offers the clearest picture for investors to show potential future performance based on the information currently known.

Investors use several complicated mathematical formulas to determine the true yield of bonds, but the YTM remains the one number that helps investors to get a better feel for how well their investment will truly do.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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Defining rental property
While the tax code provides a $250,000 per person tax exemption for gains made on your primary residence, this does not apply if you’re selling a rental property. A rental property is defined as a residence where you don’t live. This means that if you have a vacation home or a second home, you’ll owe taxes if your sale represents a gain. However, if you do live in the home for two years prior to selling it and you have owned it for five or more, you can claim some of the deduction. This is ideal for people who once treated their property as a rental before deciding to move into it.

Calculating capital gains tax
The capital gains tax rate is 20%, which means you will generally pay that rate on whatever you have gained from the sale. Figuring out what you have gained can be somewhat tricky.

The first thing to do is figure out your basis in the home. This includes what you paid for the home and any improvements you have made. Think, for instance, about the couple that buys a rental property for $200,000 in 2010. Over time, they put in a new kitchen, renovated the bathroom and added that fancy man save that everyone has been dreaming of. They updated the countertops, put in new wooden floors and built an over the garage apartment. These improvements cost roughly $100,000. This means that the couple has a $300,000 basis in the home.

The next step is to calculate the sale price properly for tax purposes. Imagine in the scenario above that the couple was able to find a buyer for $400,000. They have done quite well, netting a true $200,000 gain from purchase to sale. However, they have an additional $100,000 in improvements to add to the basis. On top of that, they had to pay $8,000 in selling costs, plus a $15,000 payment to the real estate agent who sold the home. This means that the sale price will be reduced by $23,000, leaving them with a taxable gain of $77,000.

Unless they are able to exempt some of that income, they would owe 20% on this figure, bringing the total to $15,400 in owed taxes. These taxes are unavoidable, and they become more complicated if the couple happened to take depreciation on the home from their earlier tax returns. If that is the case, then the government may be able to “recapture” some of that depreciation as ordinary income in the year of the sale.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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When to use the equity method of accounting for investments in common stock
The first decision is on which method to use for accounting. The key question comes down to something very simple. Does the investing company exercise significant influence and control over the financial dealings of the investee? If your company is able to control what the second company does, then it is best to use the equity method of accounting. If you company cannot control the financial dealings of that second company, then the cost accounting method is a better choice.

There is no cutoff in equity that brings about the equity method of accounting. It is simply based on the perception of the investing company of how much control it has. The equity share does not need to be a controlling stake. As long as the company has some ability to exercise influence, then the equity method can be a great tool to use.

When to recognize the share of profits
When a company invests in another company, that investing company will realize some share of the profits, assuming the second company is profitable. From an accounting perspective, the big question is when the investing company recognizes its profits. The answer in the equity accounting method is that the investing company recognizes its share of the profits when the second company has the profits reflected in its accounts. This means that the investing company is basically following the second company. This is why it is important that the investing company has the ability to exercise control. Under this arrangement, it is still largely in charge of the timing of its reflected gains.

If the second company happens to post a loss, then the investing company must recognize this loss when the loss is realized by the second company. The investing company will have to put its losses or gains in its income statement in the quarter and year when the losses or gains took place. This allows investors to have a clear understanding of the company’s financial position.

Using the equity method of accounting, if there are profits, then this increases the amount of investment the first company has in the second. Any losses suffered decreases the amount of investment the first company must record. The equity method’s name suggests this sliding scale of equity that is impacted by the second company’s success or lack thereof.

Jim Treebold

Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!

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