Network Marketing ( Opportunity or Scam )Written by Lamar Boone
According to a new survey carried out by Alliance & where ID_NUM=9270; Leicester, one in five small business owners view tax as their greatest concern. The Chancellor has announced in his last budget that companies with profits below 10,000 will not have to pay any corporation tax with effect from 1 April 2002. The question to be asked is: does that announcement make incorporation a more attractive option compared to being a sole trader?The answer is that from a tax point of view, it is advantageous to trade through a limited company as long as income is drawn from company by owners as dividends from their shares and amount of dividends drawn is restricted below 40% band rate (i.e. 31,063 for tax year 2002/03). That way, owners have no further personal tax ("income tax") to pay. Moreover, dividends are not subject to national insurance contributions. This is excellent news of course. But, if dividend income falls within higher rate bracket of income tax (i.e. above 34,515), they will be taxed at 22.5% on excess, which of course will increase tax burden. The company profits are subject to corporation tax rates. Those are lower than income tax rates. The most catastrophic scenario is when director takes his reward from company as salary. Then his/her salary is taxed at income tax rates (like a sole trader's income). That is because, unlike sole traders, tax system treats companies as separate from their owners because a company is a separate legal entity. The problem is that income taxes are higher than corporation tax rates. On top of that, they will be subject to employee and employer national insurance contributions, which of course increase tax burden and render his position worse than even an unincorporated business ("sole trader"), because NIC Class 1 on payroll are higher than NIC Class 2 paid by self employed. In contrast, a self employed person ("sole trader") is taxed at income tax rates on profits from his business, which are added to his other sources of income. As it has already been mentioned, income tax rates are overall higher than corporation tax rates. On top of income tax, national insurance contributions class 4 are payable on business profits within a specified band (7% on profits between 4,615and 30,420). National insurance contributions Class 2 are also paid by self-employed people, although those are lower than those payable by company directors on their salaries. To illustrate above, let's take a simple example. We have a limited company and a sole trader. They both make 60,000 profits each in tax year 2002/03. We assume that company director takes a salary equal to amount of his personal allowances (untaxed income) of 4,615 and balance as dividends. The company will pay corporation tax at 19% equal to 10,523 and nothing else. The sole trader will pay income tax 16,542, National insurance Class 2 104 and National insurance Class 4 1,806. Total 18,452. The bottom line is that person that has incorporated his business into a limited company will make a tax saving of 7,929 compared to a sole trader! Isn't that fantastic? Somebody might be wondering: why is this entire happening? The official explanation is that, this government, to help economy grow, encourages people to leave as much profits within their businesses to be reinvested, instead of being taken out and spent. The "unofficial line" is that, as a matter of fact, for years Inland Revenue has tried to reclassify self-employed. The 1% in NIC hike on staff salaries above NIC threshold from next April adds to both employees' and employers' tax burden and may more than offset saving from corporation tax zero rate on first 10,000 of profits.
| | Holiday Action Saves a Sour Shopping SeasonWritten by Beka Ruse
Usually, U.S. retailers earn 20-80% of their entire yearly gross during holiday season. But this year, things are different. The sluggish US economy has prompted Deloitte Research's Carl Steidtmann to fear "the worst Christmas ever" in retail sector.Short of going door to door in a Santa suit, how can businesses increase profits and prevent a blue Christmas? Despite economic gloom, industry leaders have found that an e-mail follow up strategy can increase sales by a cheery 35%! To weather ailing economy, use a follow up autoresponder during your holiday campaigns. ---------------------------------- What Does It Do? ---------------------------------- Follow up autoresponders follow up with your leads for you. You create a series of messages, and decide when they should be sent, (daily, weekly, etc.). Your autoresponder will send messages to each new lead automatically. With no further intervention from you, your leads will remember you throughout winter chill. And this regular reminding will mean more sales during all-important holiday shopping season. Give yourself gift of a higher conversion rate! Follow up automatically using these simple steps: * Offer Useful Information * Personalize Your Messages * Track Your Leads * Broadcast Tailor-Made Offers ---------------------------------- Offer Useful Information ---------------------------------- Write your follow up messages for your leads - not for yourself. You want to talk about your great service, but your leads just want to know what they'll get out of it! At some point, you must have purchased something like your product. What were you looking for then? Was it information about pricing, styles, or holiday gift wrapping? Maybe just a clearer explanation of product? Figure that out, and put answer in your follow up messages. That's what your leads want to know. ---------------------------------- Personalize Your Messages ---------------------------------- You don't open postal mail addressed to "Current Resident", and your leads aren't going to read e-mail addressed to "Dear Internet Friend." People are simply more likely to read messages that address them by name. Autoresponders let you use variables to personalize your messages. This way, you write just one message, but Lenny Lead reads "Happy Holidays, Lenny!" while Kate Customer reads "Happy Holidays, Kate!"
|