GDP numbers announced last week show 3rd quarter growth at 2.5% rate. Wow.
That is not exactly the kind of growth you would expect if the economy were starting to falter in advance of slipping into a double dip recession. Maybe we are not going to slip into a double dip. I discussed this idea earlier.
In its October 22 edition, The Economist issues An Apology to Rachid Ghannouchi.
The magazine restated two comments it made the previous week. I’m not tracking the backstory, but am interested in what is happening in Tunisia. I’m don’t understand the implications of the statements, but guess there are some major side issues. However, the magazine then says they were wrong.
We accept that neither of these statements is true: Mr Ghannouchi has expressly said that he accepts the Code of Personal Status; and he never threatened to hang Ms bin Salama.
No quibbling. No ‘we were misunderstood.’ No ‘we misstated our idea.’
I attended the Sticky Team 2.0 North Coast Church conference on October 24 & 25. Tag line: Growth changes everything. If I actively tweeted, here’s what I could have sent:
After reading some comments in Russell Roberts’ book, The Price of Everything, I realized that I have a lot of servants hard at work in my home. I have a huge number of servants working in my business.
See a partial list of servants who are hard at work at my other blog, Outrun Change: I Have Dozens of Servants in My Home and Business.
I have a series of posts about ratios analyzed by lenders when they are considering a loan to a church. The series has been combined into a page so you can see all the posts in chronological order. Click on the tab Ratio Analysis For Church Loan at the top of this page.
The Domino Project (Seth Godin’s new publishing effort) has published Death & Taxes.
It is a chart showing the federal budget on just one page. Good example of creative visualization.
The answer could easily be ‘yes.’
Corey Pfaffe, CPA, writing in “Benevolent” Gifts to Volunteers, says if you pay your volunteers you can generate taxable income that should be reported to the IRS.
There is a gray line that NPOs can easily cross. Mr. Pfaffe quotes a paragraph from IRS publication 3079:
“Example: ABC Organization operates a private school and sponsors [fundraisers] to raise revenue for the school. Parents who work at the [fundraising] session are given a tuition reduction of $50 for each week they work. This reduction of tuition is compensation to the parents; they are not working as “volunteers.”
A few weeks ago I attended the Dave Ramsey Live! event in Long Beach. Here is just one of the many great comments he had:
If you are in business, you should be reading these three authors:
- Jim Collins
- Seth Godin
- Malcolm Gladwell
I wholeheartedly agree.
At my other blog, Attestation Update, I’ve posted a list of some great books from these authors that can help you stretch your brain.
We may be in two simultaneous, overlapping recessions. One will go away, but the other won’t.
I have two posts at my other blog, Outrun Change, discussing this idea of overlapping recessions:
I’m trying to move my discussions of massive change in the economy and the work world to my other blog.
Good news. The IRS has issued guidance on the tax treatment of cell phones.
You probably recall, CPAs and other tax advisers have been grumping at you to report as a taxable benefit the personal usage of cell phones. Yes, I know it’s ridiculous, but that’s the way the law was written.
Previously discussed a scam where someone is sending letters saying businesses need to pay $370 to file the renewal of a fictitious business name license. Those are also called a doing-business-as name.
You also don’t have to pay anyone to file a Statement of Information (SOI-100) with the California Secretary of State. That is the form that nonprofit organizations need to file every two years. I previously mentioned that form in this post.
A local church should keep track of its equipment, improvements to property, and building.
You will definitely need that information if you have an audit, review, or compilation of your financial statements.
A far more common reason to accumulate that information is for insurance purposes. In the event of a tragedy such as earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, you will need to have some detail records to present to you insurance company to get full recovery for your loss. (more…)
This is the most technically complex ratio we will discuss. This is one of three calculations that lenders typically use when considering whether to make a loan to a local church. Previous discussions started here, and continued here and here.
The concept of this ratio is to look at how much income the church had last year to apply towards the loan payments. This would take the change in net assets (okay, okay, you can call that net income if you want) then add back interest and depreciation. This represents the income that could be applied to loan payments after all the other expenses were paid.
This number is then divided by the total P&I payments, not just the interest expense.
So you see it is an interesting arithmetic calculation. The goal is to provide an indication how easily the church will be able to continue making loan payments.
So what does this calculation look like? (more…)
