By Stephen Bucaro

Being productive and creative gives importance and meaning to lives of many people. In some cases, it may also provide them with a means to earn a living. Unfortunately, other people feel that it is easier to just steal someone else's work. How can a creative individual protect their work from thieves?

Any work you create is automatically protected by copyright law from moment you create it until 50 years after your death. To receive this protection, you must mark your work with word "Copyright" and copyright symbol © followed by date that work was created.

Obviously a thief can easily remove your copyright notice or replaced with one of their own. If legal action is required to stop a thief from using your work, you will be required to PROVE that you were original creator of work.

Proof of original authorship includes anything that can be accepted as evidence in court. Along with witnesses, you can submit sales receipts, and email or postal messages related to work. If a customer returns your material, you should save receipt and packing material as possible evidence.

by Collin Almeida

For average Americans, taxes are single largest bill they will pay. Almost 40% of every working person's wages go to taxes: that's more than most people pay in utilities, rent, car loans, or education expenses. And while burden of most bills can be lessened by working harder and earning more money, tax liability only increases, so earning more money just equals paying more taxes.

Most Americans don't realize that Uncle Sam's piece of their hard-earned pie is so enormous. After all, amount is divided into a number of small deductions: federal taxes, state taxes, county taxes, Medicare, social security, and so on. Each individual chunk looks like a reasonable price to pay in order to keep country operating smoothly, but when added together sum is staggering. The majority of people resign themselves to a lifetime of working too hard for someone else, paying too much in taxes to government, and then struggling to maintain a comfortable life after retirement. But they've been brainwashed! The truth is every person can learn to work less and keep more of their earnings, not by cheating IRS or by hiring a staff of overpriced accountants, but simply by following American Dream and becoming an entrepreneur.

Business owners, especially those with a home office, have a tremendous advantage over average working taxpayer. While most people pay taxes on total amount they earn, business owners only pay taxes on amount left over after their expenses. Imagine being able to deduct work- related transportation and clothing expenses from a paycheck before taxes come out. Imagine being able to write- off rent, utilities, remodeling, and cleaning expenses every April.

It is possible. Business owners can legally deduct all of these expenses from their revenue before Uncle Sam comes to collect his fee, and so can average American simply by starting a home-based business. For home-based operations, IRS treats home and living expenses as tax-deductible business expenses. These eligible expenses could include following: