04.11.12

Raising Awareness During Child Abuse Prevention Month
Char Rivette

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This month we set time aside to focus on the prevention of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect of children within our communities by fostering education and collaborating on programs that facilitate awareness.

03.28.12

An Ounce of Prevention for Non-Profits
Kenneth Tornheim

You don’t need to look hard to find an example of a company that has been victimized by employee theft. Just pick up the newspaper, scan the Internet or watch the news and you will likely find a story or two about a business being victimized by fraud. Charitable organizations are no exception, especially smaller ones, which can be frequent targets because they often lack the appropriate number of personnel in the finance area to segregate responsibilities.

03.21.12

Tips to Avoid an IRS Audit: Real Estate
Thomas Kosinski

Many IRS audits are designed to be focused on basic tax issues, but real estate deals can be complicated and confuse the basic facts and key issues of your tax situation. Here are five common tax issues that frequently get audited in the real estate industry:

03.03.12

Trends in Exits for Start Ups

The article below is written by Jeff Carter, co-founder of Hyde Park Angels, which is one of the most active angel groups in the US. He specifically does a great job at identifying how family offices approach angel investing differently than other investors. Jeff  states that family offices are sometimes more interested in receiving on-going […]

03.02.12

Federal Grants: What’s the Catch?

Great news! You just found out your organization is going to get a grant from the Federal government. Now you need to spend some time making sure you understand what the requirements of this grant are. Oh, by the way, does this mean you’re now receiving at least $500,000 from the government? If so, you also better call your auditors and let them know.

02.29.12

Pass Through to Greater Tax Savings

An initial challenge facing a real estate investor or developer is deciding which type of entity will best meet his/her objectives. While there are numerous entity types available, two “pass-through” entities – an S corporation and an LLC – are popular choices. Although both are “pass-through” entities for tax purposes, there are significant differences that can strongly favor one type over the other.

02.27.12

Order Up! – The Special with a Side of Fraud

Restaurants have been victimized by their servers for almost as long as restaurants have been in existence. Many servers take advantage of the industry’s historically high turnover rate to commit their scams at each new place of employment. Unfortunately, background checks rarely result in uncovering a potential new server’s fraudulent activities since restaurants rarely make this information public.

02.08.12

Splitting Costs- CAM Charges

Most businesses are affected by leases in one way or another, either as a tenant or as a landlord. Lease documents can be long and difficult to read, but paying attention to the small print could make your wallet larger particularly related to common area maintenance charges (CAM).

02.05.12

How to Pitch Angel Investors

Chris Arndt is a partner in Red Granite, a Chicago-based firm that advises high-net-worth individuals and families—a roster of clients that includes several angel investors. From his unique advisory position, Arndt says he knows what entrepreneurs should be thinking about as they go about trying to get an angel on their side. What follows, then, are his tips to do just that.

01.23.12

One + One ≠ Two? The Sum of the Parts Does Not Always Equal the Whole

Under current estate and gift tax rules, every taxpayer has the ability to give away $5 million of property during lifetime or at death. With the Bush administration tax cuts set to sunset at the end of 2012, the $5 million exemption could be reduced to as low as $1 million. Thus, any method of maximizing current gifts could prove to be very beneficial.