There's just one more business day before the new year, but the Treasury Department and the IRS won’t issue a guidance for how employers should calculate 2013 income tax withholding until the fiscal cliff deadline of December 31 has passed. Official income tax withholding tables for 2012 apply only to wages paid through December 2012 and, barring a different solution from Congress and the President by Monday, income tax rates are scheduled to increase for nearly all taxpayers.

What are employers to do if they need to process their first payroll of 2013 before new income tax tables or any guidance is issued? According to the American Payroll Association, the “only workable option” is to “continue to use the 2012 withholding tables.”

But calculating withholding is not the only unresolved payroll issue, the APA warns. Here are other imminent rate increases and expired exclusions employers must consider:

• Supplemental wages and bonuses paid after December 31 will be subject to higher tax;

Read More »from Tax Rates in Limbo, Payroll Association Says Use 2012 Tables

In the countdown to the nation’s fall over the edge of the fiscal cliff, small business advisors and advocates are imploring Congress and President Obama to come together.

While many small business owners remain paralyzed with uncertainty about 2013 budgeting, others are taking action. Based on the assumption that Congress will not reach an agreement in time to avoid the cliff, about half of business owners are making changes to prepare for higher tax rates next year, according to results of a survey conducted by financial information company, Sageworks.

The survey conducted between December 12-18 collected online responses from 164 Sageworks clients, who are accountants and business advisors to privately held businesses. The responses reflect what those professionals hear from those they advise:

• More than half of accountants surveyed said their business clients were making changes in their companies in response to fiscal cliff uncertainty.
• Almost 30 percent said their business clients

Read More »from Small business owners bracing for cliff fall

In online opinion pieces this week, two leading observers of small business economics criticized the Obama Administration and Congress.

American Small Business League President Lloyd Chapman released a statement and blogged on the Huffington Post his prediction that “the Obama administration will try to use the momentum from the fiscal cliff debate to justify plans to dismantle the Small Business Administration” by folding it into the Commerce Department. Chapman questions the Administration’s estimates that such a move would save $3 billion over 10 years. He calls the potential agency merger “just a scam to direct 100 percent of federal contract dollars to large corporations.”

Chapman argues that “eliminating federal programs for America’s chief job creators would be economic suicide” and suggests that instead, the President should “triple the SBA’s budget and supercharge every federal program for the nation’s 27 million small businesses.”

In a blog post titled The Decline of Small

Read More »from Not supporting small business is economic suicide, observers of economy say

chart: IEGC and Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business and Management

What’s a great way to accelerate sales and job growth for your company? A private equity investment or, even better, venture capital funding can translate to significant growth for small and medium-sized businesses, according to two finance professors who studied thousands of workplaces with 500 or fewer employees. The fact might seem like a no-brainer, but the data are dramatic.

One caveat: Securing that kind of financing can be especially challenging if you’re a minority, female, or foreign business owner, the study showed.

The publication, Did they build that? The role of private equity and venture capital in small and medium-sized businesses, released by the Institute for Exceptional Growth Companies and Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, documents Graziadio professors John Paglia and Augus Harjoto’s research into the performance of more than 8,000 workplaces that had received such financing between 1995 and 2009.

Their study showed that, versus

Read More »from Tough to get for some, venture funding boosts revenues and jobs

Mobile, the cloud, and systems integration are trends to watch in 2013

Which tech trends should small business owners check out to enhance their productivity in 2013? A cloud services provider, not surprisingly, puts the cloud near the top of its list of great tools for small business. But other technologies will drive efficiency too, predicts j2 Global. “Mobility, expansion of the cloud, and integration of business services are the three key trends that small and medium-sized businesses must be ready for in 2013,” the company offers. Here’s why:

1. Mobility: That the number of smart phones sold in 2011 exceeded the number of PCs sold suggests not just an increasingly mobile workforce, but that companies will learn to use mobile devices more effectively. “Smart phones and tablets will be leveraged more heavily as businesses move beyond using them just for simple communications,” j2 predicts. More sales teams will use mobile devices to input and access sales information on-the-go, and collaboration tools such as conference calling and web conferencing via

Read More »from Tech trends to transform small business in 2013

It's the end of the year - and as always for small business owners it has been a tough year - but that doesn't mean it's been a bad year - just an acknowledgement that it's always tough for the small business owner. But the end of the year is still a time to look forward with optimism - and to celebrate. With that in mid, we ran a couple of stories about gifts for the small business owner - one books (it's always a good idea to get more insight and knowledge) and one general gifts. Why not pass the articles on to your friends as a hint about what they can get you? 

And in terms of looking ahead we had a great article about the seven things you should focus on in 2013. We also had two more entries in our small business Startup Diaries series. One, as promised, is about the unexpected hard work in owning a small business. The other is a touch late out of the gate at this point - on the topic of maximizing holiday sales - but it's a keeper for next year... 

If you haven't taken the

Read More »from A New Year, Things To Do in 2013 and Gifts: Small Business Reading

Yahoo! Small Business Advisor launched officially early in 2012 and it's time to take a look back at the year and just about the best way to do that is to look at the popular articles from the past year. This is a mix of the top articles by readership mixed with the top articled by time spent reading them. We had a little bias toward our own articles and blog posts rather than those aggregated from third parties, but there are a few of those in the mix as well.

We didn't include anything from our new Startup Diaries series - that's too new for us to gauge its popularity yet.

The nature of popularity being what it is this list tends toward articles that are more applicable to the general population than just small business owners.

We ordered the articles by time rather than by popularity rank.

Wayfair's Road to $1 Billion

The Path to Recommendation - What every small business needs to know

How we founded myYearbook

Young entrepreneurs turn a Tweet from Richard Branson into $1 Million

Read More »from Ten top articles from 2013

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s an immigrant entrepreneur who has navigated the process from student visa to work visa to finally becoming a naturalized citizen, I have firsthand knowledge of how our immigration system works -- or doesn’t work, as is often the case. Today, as a Managing Director of Hattery, a venture capital firm in San Francisco, I see many other entrepreneurs facing off against an outdated system as they set about the important work of creating new businesses in the United States.

The economic benefits of immigration are well documented. We can see the success of companies founded or cofounded by an immigrant. We also know the correlation between the presence of high-skilled immigrant workers and the number of local jobs created in the U.S. economy. Behind that data is a story of prosperity built on the back of immigration that has been part of the American story since its founding.

Despite this, America faces a real problem when it comes to immigration. There’s a gap in the labor force that

Read More »from Why Small Businesses Should Care about Immigration Reform