| Website
of the Month: Small Business Taxes & Management
By
Susan B. Anders
FEBRUARY 2006 - The
Small Business Taxes & Management website, www.smbiz.com,
describes itself as “providing tax and management
guidance” for the owners of small to mid-sized businesses,
which might lead accountants to assume that the available
resources are fairly basic. This unassuming website from
A/N Group, Inc., however, is an incredible resource for
tax practitioners, educators, and students.
The
design of the website is plain and gives no hint of the
large number of outstanding tax materials. New users willing
to spend time with this website will be pleased with their
discoveries. All information is free, with no registration
required. A few tax-related advertisements appear, but users
are not inundated with pop-ups.
The
homepage is in a table-of-contents format. Individual topics
are presented as hyperlinks under the headings and are generally
listed in the order posted rather than any particular topical
sequence. Some topics appear under multiple headings, but
most are listed once. Many resources are in HTML format,
but some PDF documents are provided, as well as links to
the IRS website and extensive links to other websites for
small business–related information. One of the best
resources for the general user is an extensive and comprehensive
listing of links to approximately 200 websites of interest
to both individuals and business owners.
The
table-of-contents homepage is the main organizational tool.
Connections to external websites open in the same window.
At the time of this review, all of the tested links were
working and the materials were remarkably up to date.
Most
of the resources have been created by A/N Group, Inc., and
are not merely links to other sites. While the website creators
state that the information is for business owners, much
of the material is quite technical.
Tax
News and Current Events
The
first heading on the homepage is “daily update,”
which is indeed updated each weekday. The topic “news
and tip of the day” offers tax news for the past several
weeks. Perhaps the best features in this area are links
to the IRS website to retrieve Internal Revenue Bulletins,
news releases, and written determinations, and a connection
to the U.S. Tax Court website. The daily update also includes
federal tax and comprehensive state tax “to-do lists”
for the current month.
Special
reports provide several current topical discussions. For
example, at the time of this review, two reports addressed
vehicle donations, and fairly comprehensive reports covered
year-end planning for businesses as well as for individuals.
“Recent legislation” presents summaries of tax
acts.
Handy
Tax-Practice Resources
IRC
section 179 expense limits, federal depreciation tables,
IRS interest rates, and other resources are located under
“other recent additions/updates” and “reference
section.” Recent and historic corporate tax rates,
individual tax rates, individual standard deduction and
personal exemption amounts, and per diem amounts are also
under the reference section. Direct links to several IRS
webpages geared toward business owners and their tax advisors
are presented under “IRS quick links.”
The
reference section also provides several excellent materials.
“State sites” provides links to the taxing authority,
the secretary of state, and the CPA societies for all 50
states and the District of Columbia. “Special forms”
offers some sample forms created by A/N Group, Inc., such
as S corporation and partnership owner basis worksheets
and an
election to forgo a net operating loss carryback.
Susan
B. Anders, PhD, CPA, is an associate professor of
accounting at St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure,
N.Y. |