Small Businesses Long-Term

Brick-and-mortar small-business owners are often reticent to spend their small amount of free time learning creative tools or how to build a successful social media strategy. The stay-at-home order has created both the time and the need to lean far more heavily on digital marketing. 

The wisest businesses will take advantage of remote collaboration platforms that allow employees to work with each other asynchronously. Slack and Microsoft Teams have seen dramatic rises in usage.

The combination of skilled people at home needing to make money and bored people at home looking to enrich or entertain themselves is a recipe for a booming population of micro-entrepreneurs. One person with a skill in demand can find an audience. It may, or may not, surpass the earning potential of whatever the person was doing before, but it will open many people’s eyes to new possibilities. 

Openings and closings may be doom restaurants and other businesses!

Many restaurants were set to be able to offer indoor dining this week, but officials scrapped those plans as Covid-19 cases rose across several parts of the country.

Officials in parts of the country also are taking steps to rollback some of their coronavirus reopening plans, especially businesses like bars, gyms and banquet facilities

You Can Cut Business Costs

                                       

Over 79% of small businesses were hit by the pandemic. To lessen the impact of Covid-19 on your business, you should make use of all the available resources and try to cut business costs to have more cash in hand.

Following are some proven cost-cutting ideas for your small business:

*Look for discounts from your local chambers

*Try to adopt free cloud tools, such as Google Drive, Skype, etc.

*Outsource short-term projects

*Adopt a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program

*Purchase used equipment for your business

*Allow more employees to work from home if it is feasible

*Look for tax deductions (see upper right corner of blog)

Nearly 90% of Consumers Want a Local Business to Continue Pandemic Services Such As Curbside Pickup.

Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO at Podium, says what was once an option has become the only way to sell goods and services during COVID 19.

“While previously just a nice way to do business, offering options like contactless payments, texting and curbside pickup have become the only way for local businesses to operate,” he said in a press release. “There has been steady movement towards digital transformation among local businesses in recent years. That accelerated over the past few months. Consumers have become accustomed to the new forms of communications and services. There’s no going back.”

Small Business Update

Small businesses see a downturn in local economies. 

The number of small businesses reporting a good local economy declined seven percentage points 

from 59% to 52% in Q1

What can they do to survive?

Take a 5-minute survey to find their solution.

In the next year, do you anticipate increasing staff, retaining the same size staff, or reducing staff?

Hiring Incentives have been a part of our country's infrastructure since the early 1940s. At that time most Hiring Incentives were focused on Veterans returning to work after periods of service. This continued to be the main focus for Hiring Incentives until the 197os and 1980s when the focus was expanded to include Ex Felons, and Welfare Recipients.

There was a dramatic shift and expansion to Hiring Incentives in the late 1990s throughout the 2000s which opened the door for Job Creation as the focus for Hiring Incentives. As a part of this change the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) was created in 1996 and has been modified, extended and consolidated with existing Hiring Incentives repeatedly since.

The credit was scheduled to be eliminated in 2015, but the PATH Act signed in December 2015 reinstated the tax credit and extended it through December 31, 2019.

WOTC allows employers to claim a credit against their federal income tax liabilities for qualified employees. WOTC can also be used to offset AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). Employers generally can earn a tax credit equal to 25% or 40% of a new employee's first-year wages, up to the maximum for the target group to which the employee belongs. Employers will earn 25% if the employee works at least 120 hours and 40% if the employee works at least 400 hours.

The average benefit per employee is $2,400 and can be as much as $9600. That means potentially 10 qualified employees could yield a federal income tax credit between $24K and $96K. Additionally, WOTC credits may be carried back one year and carried forward 20 years.

Simply put, the WOTC reduces an employer's cost of doing business and turns Hurman Resources into a profit center.

Historically the steps necessary to qualify for the WOTC have been time consuming and burdensome. GMG Savings has made substantial investments in a proprietary technology process that relieves the employer of 90% of this burden by automating most of the steps involved in prescreening and certifying candidates before hiring as well as streamlining the submission of required documentation to State and Federal agencies.

Our online Client portal allows for a simple interface that any size company can take advantage of to avoid the paperwork, tracking, and submission headache that come with managing the WOTC program on their own.

Please use this link to review additional information on the WOTC benefit: www.yourwotc.com

Have you increased staff, retained the same size staff, or reduced staff?

YourWotc.com, a Federal program created after WWII, grants you $2400-$9600 for each new hire and now also applies to retaining employees and there is a new employee retention tax credit for employers who are closed, partially closed, or experiencing significant revenue losses as a result of COVID-19.

Test it now and see your potential tax credits No contract required, no software to buy and it does 90% of the work for you.