The World Business

Archive for August, 2011

You really have to wonder what sort of tax advice some businesses are getting, when you read the various gripes of the business community about taxation. In practice, there are plenty of good legitimate tax effective options for businesses; it’s really a matter of getting the right tax accountants to know how to take advantage of these opportunities.

(Experts please excuse a somewhat simplified approach to this often highly technical matter, but the message has to be rammed home that there are always better tax options for business. It’s important to clarify the issues without getting tangled in legalisms and statutory jargon.)

It really is inexcusable that so many businesses don’t seem to be aware of the most basic facts in this regard. Either they’re getting lousy advice or their accountants are being paid for doing nothing. One way or the other, the truth is that all businesses already have the option to use effective tax minimization schemes to their advantage.

Tax effective strategies, basic principles

The core principle in tax effective strategies is based on the fact that some business activities attract more tax than others. Tax effective strategies are planning principles used to chart the most tax effective way of doing business.

There’s not really any valid excuse for overlooking the tax effective options. Good business tax accountants routinely incorporate the best tax options in their reports. Why others don’t is open to debate, but it’s appallingly lax business practice. In some cases specialist knowledge is required, but the general idea of tax effectiveness is hardly a secret in the accountancy profession.

Tax minimization, explained

Tax minimization is exactly what it sounds like- A bona fide, legal, way of minimizing exposure to taxation. Tax minimization schemes may involve multiple issues and multiple tax regulations, but they’re designed to produce significant tax savings.

Tax minimization is actually a type of financial planning, using existing tax breaks to minimize the tax impact of business activities. For instance, a business operation costing $10 million may incur a normal tax of $3.5 million without tax minimization. With the tax minimization, the tax bill is $1.5 million. That’s a saving of over 50% of the original tax bill, and it’s quite legal.

Finding the right advice about tax effective strategies

If you’re in business, you know that guesswork is dangerous, particularly on the subject of hard cash. Nowhere is this truer than in relation to tax. For taxation purposes, you do need experts, preferably specialists in the field of business taxation with a good track record. Business taxation specialists are always up to date on the current laws and regulations, and have existing working models of tax effective schemes for their clients to examine.

Also remember you can always talk to the regulators. In some countries like Australia, the Taxation Office will send officers to consult regarding tax issues on a without prejudice basis. You can double check any information you get using this method. Some business accounting software also has useful references to taxation and references.

Switching to VOIP business systems is not like turning your company upside down as you install a mass of cables and machinery like it was when the PBX was introduced. It is very easy, and in most markets, it costs nothing.

VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) based business phone systems are increasing popular. It is getting to the point where if you don’t have VOIP, you cannot communicate with clients and suppliers in the way they are already used to. Video calling has fast become the norm. It is easy to think VOIP calling and video calling will cost your company a fortune. In actual fact, the switch over cost is minimal, any devices are normally included with the change without an upfront fee, and your communication costs will be greatly reduced as a result of using VOIP. It is practically impossible for VOIP to be costing you half of your current call costs, and you get video and a lot more services included. In this article, we look at the essentials needed in your office when switching over to VOIP communication services.

• Application. VOIP is a software application. Skype was the company to make VOIP calling well-known to computer users. Microsoft just purchased Skype for 8.9 billion dollars, and so you can expect it to be on every PC running the new Windows 8 operating system. There are literally thousands of VOIP applications available on the market. Some have more features than others. Your VOIP provider is providing their application and their tools to use it. The simplest version of VOIP is an application running on a computer, the most sophisticated uses dedicated servers to run a whole office of handsets allowing VOIP calling, while integrating existing phone systems and landline calling options. In most cases, all those computers handling the phone system are in the facilities of the provider.
• High Speed Internet. No internet speed, and you don’t have the ability to send that information down the internet, and therefore, you cannot have good enough quality calls with VOIP. Standard broadband available to consumers in modern countries is generally good enough, but more expensive dedicated internet connections with super-high speeds are an excellent choice for business because they can handle more data, and they do it faster. You need a network in your office to handle several handsets. Handsets can even operate over a wireless network, if you wish.
• VOIP Handsets. VOIP handsets look like ordinary phones with more buttons, a display, camera and loudspeakers. We can think of these handsets as the devices that communicate with the VOIP application of the provider, that is either on a single computer in your office, or on a high speed dedicated server in the facilities of your VOIP provider. They are like the keyboard, camera and speakers of the laptop if you choose to use Skype. Buying these devices is probably the biggest upfront cost related to VOIP for business, and in many cases, providers are actually renting the devices on very low fees to eliminate upfront costs.

As you can see, the installation, setup and kick-off for VOIP is extremely easy and will be almost instantaneous.

Deals with the issues of downtime, the demand for external IT support and backups on a business basis.

The days of the old internal IT department are going, fast. The new option, external IT management and outsourcing services, is putting an end to the days of IT staff trying to be everywhere at the same time and doing what they can with what they have. The fact is that technology has superseded this approach to IT management. The new outsourced IT services management approach is far more efficient, far cheaper, and infinitely more cost efficient at all levels.

External IT support basics

External IT management has been a game changer for a lot of businesses. In practice, it means more resources, better options for businesses, and customized IT systems adapted to real business needs.

External IT outsourcing does a lot more than the old internal IT services could ever do, while including the same basic operations as well.

These services provide:

• Direct help desk support
• Remote monitoring
• Upgrades for business systems
• Business system customization and design
• Database management
• Integration of business systems
• Hosting business applications
• Training for staff
• Offsite data backups
• Security management and upgrades

These are all major core business issues. They impact all areas of business from management down to sales, administration and operations at the coal face. The increased efficiencies possible are so far in advance of the normal standalone business IT operation it’s almost unbelievable.

External IT outsourcers also provide IT business consulting services. These services are invaluable for improving IT performance and system design. The new business management systems are far ahead of those usually accessible to businesses using standalone IT management. They can streamline IT and administration systems into best practice business management systems and drastically improve performance.

Perhaps more importantly, they can also eliminate the long administrative “tail” created by typical business systems which involves using multiple platforms and software which have to be manually integrated by admin. If you’ve ever seen the problems created trying to create reports while accessing multiple information systems and putting the information on to admin systems, you’ll appreciate the value of this approach. It saves a lot of time and money.

Critical issue- External backups and support

The main issue confronting businesses is that various parts of the IT system can crash or create problems at various levels. This is also typical of non-integrated systems where a range of runtime errors and “dubious” interoperability of systems can cause chaos. Worse, it can cause a lot of downtime, backlogs, and in some cases serious risk of data loss.

If all that sounds expensive, it can be, very, and the result is a net loss of time, money and in some cases business, particularly if sales systems are affected. This is where the external backups come into the picture, providing guaranteed support where it’s need most. Remote IT management services can also provide direct support to people on the ground, another valuable asset.

In practice, external backup and support, which was one of the original support functions of the early IT systems, has now become the mainstay of IT management. This support is invaluable. It can provide solutions instantly and effectively, around the clock. If you’re looking for better IT options, start by looking at these solutions. You won’t regret it.

Corresponding author Christian Wetzel from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), NY, believes that his team’s work can help the development of high efficacy LEDs covering the entire visible spectrum. This could culminate in efficient lighting with a very high colour quality. Switching from a planar substrate to one patterned with 250 nmwide circular holes increased light output and reduced the threading dislocation density.

By analysing interference fringes associated with green electroluminescence from the LED, the researchers determined that nanopatterning increased light extraction by 58 percent.Although the team recorded the output from many dies, they only considered a few patterning parameter values, and Wetzel believes that a more systematic study of the influence of patterning on LED light output is warranted. Transmission electron microscopy images of the nitride films revealed that nanopatterning of sapphire cuts threading dislocation densities from 6.4 x 108 cm-2 to 3.6 x 108 cm-2.Improvement in crystal quality stems from the absence of threading dislocations from the bottom of etched holes, which are mostly stopped by open voids; and the strong suppression of threading dislocations originating from the inclined facets that change direction, and propagate within the growth plane.

After loading the patterned substrate into an MOCVD tool, an epitaxial structure was deposited that included an active region with eight 3 nm-thick InGaN quantum wells separated with GaN barriers.A doped, 10 nm-thick AlGaN electronblocking layer also formed part of the high power laser diodes.Devices with no encapsulation and dimensions of 350 µm by 350 µm were formed from this patterned substrate, plus a planar one that acted as a control. At 30 mA and 100 mA drive currents the nanopatterned LED produced 2.3 mW at 537 nm and 5.2 mW at 523 nm, while the control delivered 0.88 mW at 542 nm and 1.8 mW at 527 nm.

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