The opportunities and challenges facing your entrepreneur clients

American entrepreneurship is on the rise. Based on a historical analysis of a subset of Paychex clients, in the first quarter of 2018, small business entrepreneurship was near its best pace since the recession. Odds are you’re seeing more entrepreneurs walk through your doors looking for financial guidance as they start and run their business, but are you aware of the current state of entrepreneurship, as well as the opportunities and barriers your clients face?

A new report by Paychex analyzes American entrepreneurship during the past decade and the state of small business today, including today’s business owners’ attitudes and perceptions of the current business environment.

Overall, the majority of business owners feel positively about the state of business as a whole. More than three quarters of small business owners (79 percent) would recommend starting a business today, and 71 percent of business owners describe today’s business environment as either better or the same compared to when they started their business. Most business owners (74 percent) cited the satisfaction of working for themselves as a reason they’d recommend starting a business today. However, the age and size of the business impacts business owners’ outlook:

• Business owners who started their company during or closely following the recession (four to nine years ago) were more likely (57 percent) to say the business environment is better today than when they started, compared to only 32 percent of those who started their companies 20 or more years ago.

• Eighty-one percent of business owners with 100 to 500 employees say the business environment is better today than when they started, compared to 46 percent of owners with one to 19 employees.

• Owners of larger businesses were also more likely to recommend starting a business today. Ninety-four percent of owners with 100 to 500 employees and 91 percent with 20 to 99 employees would recommend starting a business today compared to 78 percent of owners with one to 19 employees.

From an individual standpoint, business owners today also have a positive outlook on their future. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) are optimistic or very optimistic about their ability to make a profit, and 58 percent are optimistic or very optimistic about their prospects for growth. Half of business owners are optimistic or very optimistic about the U.S. economy, but they face some barriers to starting and running a business too:

• Ninety percent of business owners are at least slightly concerned about rising costs and 84 percent of business owners are at least slightly concerned about taxes.

• In today’s tightening labor market, 67 percent of business owners are at least slightly concerned with finding quality employees (30 percent are very concerned).

• Additionally, approximately 25 percent of business owners are at least somewhat pessimistic about their ability to hire and raise wages.

Each business owner seeks different outcomes from their entrepreneurial endeavors. Only 11 percent of business owners say rapid growth is their top priority at this time. The majority are happy to remain comfortably profitable or grow at a moderate rate.

• Remaining “comfortably profitable” was the top choice for male owners, owners in business 10 or more years, and owners age 50 or older.

• Growing at a “manageable rate” was the top response from female business owners, owners in business nine or fewer years, and owners 18 to 34 years old.

Knowing how today’s business owners are feeling and what they’re facing can help you as you advise them in starting and growing their business. Though business owners know that rising costs and taxes are impacting their business success, your expertise can guide them to best manage and plan for the expected and unexpected barriers they face. 

Source: Accountingtoday.com, Written by: F. Fiorille

Bitcoin is property, not currency

The tax implications of cryptocurrency have become increasingly important as the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies step up their scrutiny of transactions involving bitcoin or other forms of virtual currency.

Despite the fact that the IRS said everything it planned to say about the tax aspects of cryptocurrency nearly four years ago, in Notice 2014-21, there is a mismatch between the number of U.S. citizens who have bought, sold, mined, or received or spent cryptocurrency in transactions, and the number who have reported it on their tax returns.

According to Credit Karma, only .04 percent of the tax returns that they have filed for clients so far this year reported cryptocurrency transactions. Meanwhile, Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, is estimated to have had 11.7 million users by the end of October 2017. And since Notice 2014-21 says that cryptocurrency is property, not currency, any transaction likely results in a reportable gain or loss.

“When you exchange currency for currency, it’s not a taxable transaction,” said Ryan Losi, a CPA and executive vice president of accounting firm Piascik. “But when you exchange property for property, it is a taxable transaction. You have to identify every piece you have, how it was acquired, was the way you acquired it a taxable transaction, and was it a taxable transaction when you disposed of it. You need to compute the gain or loss, and the character of the gain or loss. When you acquire cryptocurrency on a daily basis, this can become a nightmare.”

“And the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made a major change to the code under Section 1031, which allows businesses and investors to exchange like-kind property tax-free,” he said. “Since 2014, many practitioners took that to mean that if you exchange virtual currency for other virtual currency, then any gain can be tax-free or deferred under Section 1031.” That possibility no longer exists as a result of tax reform, Losi noted.

On top of that, he pointed out that the largest custodian of virtual currency, Coinbase, lost a legal battle with the IRS requesting a subpoena of their records, so now they have to disclose the vast majority of their U.S. users.

“So the IRS will have data to determine if Americans are reporting gain from virtual currency,” said Losi. “Now, U.S. account holders with balances of $20,000 or higher are covered by the subpoena.”

“It’s up to the individual to keep records,” he added. “If you bought a house using bitcoin, it’s as if you sold the bitcoin and used the proceeds to buy the house. You’re liable for tax on the gain between when you acquired it and when you bought the house.”

MINING TROUBLE?

Taxpayers who “mine” virtual currency realize gross income upon receipt of the virtual currency resulting from those activities, according to Notice 2014-21. Mining includes using computer resources to validate bitcoin transactions and maintain the public transaction ledger. Moreover, if a taxpayer’s “mining” constitutes a trade or business, and the mining activity is not undertaken by the taxpayer as an employee, the net earnings from self-employment resulting from those activities constitute self-employment income and are subject to the self-employment tax.

“Bitcoin miners use computing horsepower to solve complex algorithms,” Losi said. “If they do this successfully, the community reward for solving the problem and creating the block sequence of the next block in the chain is their currency, which had a value in 2017 of $8,000 to $19,000. Each algorithm gets exponentially harder to solve than the last.”

In this area, practitioners disagree with the IRS’s approach, according to Losi. “If I mine for precious metals, when I strike gold or diamonds or copper or zinc, the mere striking does not equal a taxable event. It goes into inventory and it’s not until I sell that it’s a taxable event. But when I receive a bitcoin credit to an online wallet, the IRS treats it as a taxable event. When you are credited with the coin it’s treated as service income.”

“This is wrong — when you make an exchange you need two parties,” he said. “When a bitcoin miner receives a coin, all it does is expand the number of bitcoins in circulation.”

Chuck Sockett, a managing director at UHY Advisors, agreed: “Someone who mines uses equipment to go into the ground and mine, and bring gold or diamonds to the surface. There’s no gain until the miner disposes of the mineral. If you mine virtual currency you can deduct the expenses of the computer, but the IRS considers anything you mine to be immediately taxable. That troubles me.”

A SURPRISING SUBPOENA

Investors in cryptocurrency assumed that they had complete privacy because of blockchain technology, according to Marvin Kirsner, a shareholder in Greenberg Traurig.

“But they didn’t consider that the IRS would issue summonses to get information from a virtual currency exchange, and many investors are having their information disclosed to the IRS by the exchange,” he said. “The subpoena to Coinbase will likely be the first of many subpoenas, so now the IRS knows the names and identities of investors. They will start getting audit notices as to why they didn’t report these transactions.”

“I advised my clients a year ago to file amended returns to reflect all their trading,” he added.

Kirsner believes that the IRS will eventually come out with a voluntary disclosure program, similar to the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program in place since 2014 (which the IRS just announced that it would wind down by Sept. 28, 2018 — see page 15).

Most transactions are likely to generate short-term capital gain at ordinary income rates, according to UHY’s Sockett. “People in the office who are buying and selling very quickly — that’s all short-term. And if it’s treated as inventory, it’s just ordinary income from the sale.”

WIDER INTEREST

It’s not just the IRS that has increased its scrutiny of cryptocurrency, Sockett noted, adding that both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission have taken recent action on cryptocurrencies.

The SEC issued two investor alerts in 2013 and 2014 to make investors aware of the potential risks of investments involving bitcoin and other virtual currencies, and in July 2017 it stated that initial coin offerings can sometimes be considered securities. In February 2018, it issued 80 subpoenas to companies and promoters involved in issuing cryptocurrency. “It comes down to classification as a security,” said Sockett. “If the SEC wins out, ICOs will have to be registered as a security. Their concern is whether any of the offerings involve fraud or misrepresentation that might hurt investors.”

“After the SEC goes through the different ICOs, they will come out with a position that will likely change the playing field,” he said. “And the IRS may give additional guidance after the SEC takes a position.”

Source, accountingtoday.com