In the US, we are on a pay as you go tax system. If you have a W2, income tax is withheld from each paycheck based on the W4. If you have income from other sources, such as self employment, 1099’s, stock sales or dividends, or rental properties you may be required to pay estimated tax payments throughout the year. This is intended to make it easier for taxpayers to pay their taxes throughout the year instead of one lump sum at the end of the year. Or, you could say that it ensures the IRS receives payments by making the payment smaller and dividing it in to quarterly payments instead of requiring payment for the whole sum after the tax return is prepared. The quarterly estimated payments are based on the AGI and your tax rate as well as the capital gains tax rate or self employment rate from the previous year.
Individuals, including sole proprietors, partners, and S corporation shareholders, generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe tax of $1,000 or more when their return is filed.
The penalty for not paying your quarterly estimated payment varies from quarter to quarter. The IRS will calculate your penalty for you. The penalty rate is the federal short term rate + 3%. In 2020, the Q2 rate for underpayment was 5% but then it dropped to 3% in Q3. When you pay your quarterly estimated payments also matters when determining your penalty. You could pay the entire amount, but still be penalized if it is not paid by the due date.
For Texas residents impacted by the winter storm, the Q1 and Q2 payments are due on June 15th in 2021. Q3 payment is due September 15th and Q4 payment is due January 15th of 2022. Typically, Q1 payment is due April 15th.
What construction companies should think about when getting an insurance policy:
It’s key for contractor to disclose all the business activities, their rates will be base on that but most important any activity that is not disclosure could potentially be denied if a claim arise doing those activities.
Contractor policies are based on the activities, the amount of employees and cost of labor (subcontracting and/or payroll). Carrier do audits on this policy after the policy year expired and can collect any additional premium was due if the cost of employee was much higher than want it was disclosed. Therefore it’s important to have a close communication with your agent if your business is experiencing growth and be prepare for the collection of the additional premiums. This is what it gets most contractors when the face high invoices at the end of the policy year forcing their policies to lapse.
Consider getting coverage for Faulty Work, depending on the area of construction you can get this policies for a very inexpensive cost that can save you lot of money if you face a fault work claim. The coverage only covers the materials if you need to reinstall due to a bad installation.
Coverage for your tools and equipment is another coverage that many contractors forget and it’s the most losses they face due to the high risk of theft of tools on their vehicles or side jobs.
Your website is the foundation of the online presence for your business. Is it working correctly? Answering that question isn’t that simple. To achieve your marketing goals, businesses should monitor specific indicators of performance. There are some indicators that almost all businesses will want to measure when reviewing their website’s analytics. Below is an explanation of 5 indicators that you should look at as you analyze your business’s online presence.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions on your website where the user exits without any interactions. The extent to which bounce rate matters depends on the type of website your business has. For example, if your website is only one webpage, a high bounce rate is more acceptable than when your website has multiple pages which should all be visited during one session. For example, according to Hotjar, the average e-commerce website’s bounce rate is between 20 and 45 percent, with a bounce rate under 20% being “exceptional.” On the other hand, the average bounce rate for a small business landing page is between 60 and 90 percent. Still, if the bounce rate is above the average range, it shows that users aren’t engaged by the webpage and is something you definitely would want to look into. Google Analytics provides multiple reports which contain bounce rate as a metric. This can help you isolate problematic areas of your website that need to be looked at and fixed.
Pages per Session
The number of pages users look at during a session is an indicator of how engaged they were when they were on your website. The more pages viewers look at in a session, the more likely they are to use your services or buy your product. An issue with only looking at the bounce rate is that it shows whether users engaged with your website, but not how much their engagement level was. Of course, the number of pages on your website affects how important this should be to your business.
Audience information
As a business, it is important to know what the demographic of people viewing your website. That can help you better communicate to them and turn make a sell. Knowing this group will allow your business to have the information needed to do a better job of targeting your ideal customer. For example, if your ideal clients are men 50 and above, and you are not attracting this demographic then changes must be made. You may need more relatable images and content on your web site for this group.
Sources, Mediums and Campaigns
A good way to better understand your business is to see where users came from to your website. The term source is the website where a user was before your website. This could be direct search, search engines like Google, or other sites if users clicked on links to go to your website. The medium means the type of search that happened or the way that a user came to your website. Examples include organic search (unpaid,) cost per click (paid search) and many others. Campaigns are specific marketing operations to bring people to your website. You can look in Google Analytics to see which campaigns are doing better than others. All of these help you understand where your audience is coming from and informs your business strategy. For example, if you have a lot of followers on social media but very few of them visit your site to take an action, you may need to modify your efforts.
Conversion Types
A conversion is when someone transacts with your business, helping achieve your greater business goal. There are many ways in which one could give credit for conversions. One way is to give credit only to the page where users completed the transaction. But it can also be useful to know how people got to that page. An assisted conversion is where a user goes to the final page to complete a transaction from another page of your website. In Google Analytics, you can look at the paths that users take from first landing on your website to buying something. That way you can see what sites contribute most to users buying from your business. For example, for an e-commerce business, the final step of a conversion is the shopping cart page on their website, but a user might have visited their site twice through direct search before making the purchase. Each of these times contributed to the purchase, meaning that direct search would get credit for an assisted conversion.
Conclusion
One of the most important things you need for your business to succeed is knowledge about who your clients are and what strategies are the most successful at retaining them and attracting new clients. By looking at these indicators, you can analyze what parts of your business operations are succeeding and which need to be changed, and ultimately maximize your profits.
With communications nowadays happening a lot on the Internet, the importance of social media cannot be understated. Social media is a tool that allows businesses to increase their visibility, redirecting traffic toward them, and maintain strong connections in the online world. If businesses are strategic about their content, posting to social media can be a massive edge over the competition. Here are some reasons why it is crucial to get a Facebook Business page and an Instagram business account. I will first cover Facebook Business Pages and then cover Instagram business accounts. (Note that many of the advantages of Facebook Business pages are also advantages of Instagram Business accounts.)
Advantages of a Facebook Business Pages
Facebook Business pages can help your business by building your company’s online identity. A Facebook Business page helps viewers find out about your company and understand the products and services it offers. A well-designed page also shows the company’s culture and values. This kind of authenticity helps retain current customers and can appeal to potential customers. Well-run pages frequently post content and interact with or mention their audience, keeping members of their audience engaged and interacting with your business.
Another benefit of using a Facebook Business page is having access to specialized tools not included with a personal profile. An example of this is Insights. Insights collects data about your viewers, such as demographics, and their interactions with the page. This lets the business owner analyze trends among their viewers. If used effectively, this is a significant improvement over using a personal account.
Finally, Facebook Business pages can help spread awareness of your business and increase traffic to your business’s other pages. For example, you can post about important events your company is involved in organizing and post links to find out more. Then, viewers who click the link are redirected to learn more on another page, increasing viewership and also keeping users interactive.
Advantages of a Instagram Business Pages
Similar to the benefits of using a Facebook Business page over a personal account, there are benefits to using a Business Account on Instagram. One advantage is the ability to pre schedule posts, or write many posts ahead of time to be published at predetermined times. This is more efficient, since you can write many posts in a single sitting. Furthermore, pre scheduling posts is an effective way to increase viewership, by scheduling posts for when your company’s audience is the most active online.
Instagram as a platform also offers advantages that Facebook doesn’t. According to this article, Instagram has a younger user base, with most users being under 30. Using Instagram can therefore help your business cater to a wider demographic and attract more clients. Also, Facebook and Instagram are best suited for different types of posts. Facebook is best for posts with lots of text, while posts with lots of photos tend to do well on Instagram.
Using a Facebook and Instagram Business account will allow you to run targeted ads based on the user’s specific interest and habits. Overall, in today’s age, social media is an important investment for any company’s marketing strategy. Knowing different platforms and their features can help your business succeed in forming a larger, more connected network of clients.
Now more than ever, it is crucial for businesses to invest in their social media presence. Social media helps businesses increase visibility, gain new clients, and engage their audience. If you want to learn more about the benefits of platforms like Facebook or Instagram for your business, read HERE. This begs the question, how can businesses make the most out of social media? One technique is called pre scheduling. This is where social media posts are scheduled to automatically get posted at a certain time. Pre scheduling can help businesses update social media with less effort and maximize viewership by strategizing their content and the times their posts are published. Facebook already offers pre scheduling for businesses, but what about other social media sites? Today, you will learn how to pre schedule posts on your Instagram business account by connecting it to your Facebook business page. Note that this will only work if the Instagram account being linked is a professional business account, not a personal one.
Here are the instructions to link your Instagram business account to your Facebook business profile:
Go to your Facebook business profile. On the left side, you should see a sidebar titled “Manage Page.” Click on Settings.
Under settings, click on Instagram.
Click on the option to Connect Account and continue to your Instagram account or sign in. You will want to make sure it is the correct Instagram account before selecting this option.
Now that the accounts are connected, if you go back to Settings > Instagram, you should see a page titled “Connected Instagram Account” listing account details.
Now, go to your page on business.facebook.com, and click on the “Publishing Tools” tab. Click on “Scheduled Posts” on the left-hand sidebar. When you click “Create Post,” you should see both Facebook and Instagram as options under “Placements”. Note that if you pre schedule a post for only Instagram (and not Facebook,) it may not show up under pre scheduled posts, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been pre scheduled. Be cautious to pre schedule posts for Instagram only once, otherwise you will end up with duplicate posts.
“Why are American workers becoming harder to find?”, an article this week in The Economist found that total job vacancies nationwide are at the highest level for at least 2 decades. There are plenty of unfulfilled positions, causing a labor shortage, even though employers are offering higher pay.
The online zine, The Hill, noted that “as of March this year (2021) the U.S. was still 8.4 million jobs short of pre-pandemic levels, a year after the economy lost more than 21 million jobs amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate has since dropped to 6 percent, but it does not reflect millions of Americans who left the labor force because of the pandemic. While there are still millions of unemployed people still looking for work, restaurants, bars, fast food, retailers are having trouble hiring to meet the surging demand.”
The Economist article explored three reasons. First, over-generous stimulus checks and bonus unemployment; yet studies don’t back this one up during this pandemic. Stimulus checks were a huge help when there really weren’t jobs available during the height of the pandemic.
The second reason was the fear factor, the fear of Covid, to work in jobs that are public facing. Hopefully, vaccines should be bringing this reason to a close over the next few months.
Lastly, the extraordinary reallocation of resources accelerated by the pandemic, meaning the huge shift in where the jobs are both in locations and sectors. McKinsey & Company published a report on Feb 18, 2021 on the future of work after Covid 19 that started with a startling quote: The pandemic accelerated existing trends in remote work, e-commerce, and automation, with up to 25 percent more workers than previously estimated potentially needing to switch occupations.
McKinsey & Company also studied the effect of Covid on women in the workforce, particularly women with children under 10 years old. In an article published March 8, 2021, a study last year found nearly 23 percent of women workers were considering leaving the workforce in 2020. Many women left the workforce to help their children through the school year will likely/hopefully be ready to get back to work in the fall assuming vaccines put the pandemic behind us.
Economists believe that this hiring issue will work itself out in the next several months. In the meantime, a caution to employers to about offering higher salaries if they can’t sustain that salary into the future. To offer a high salary now just to reduce it later will bring big morale and productivity problems later.
It might mean, too, that business might start looking at new ways to staff their operations. McKinsey concludes that businesses can start with a granular analysis of what work can be done remotely by focusing on the tasks involved rather than whole jobs. For businesses with jobs with high physical proximity, these are likely to experience the most disruption post-covid.
