Is Your State Taxing Your Small Business to Death? Details of Best ‘Business-Friendly’ Tax States
Tax rates matter to a small business owner or aspiring entrepreneur. A new report examines the most ‘business friendly’ tax systems across the nation. South Dakota comes out on top in the new analysis from the Tax Foundation. The Tax Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization tracking federal, state and local taxes since 1937 and has released the 2010 State Business Tax Climate Index.
The annual analysis measures the competitiveness of the 50 states' tax systems and ranks them accordingly based on the taxes that matter most to businesses and business investment: corporate income, individual income, property, sales, and unemployment insurance taxes.
The top 10 most business friendly states were South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Nevada, Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, Delaware, Washington, and Utah.
The 10 least friendly are New Jersey, New York, California, Ohio, Iowa, Maryland, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont.
Looking for a state I did not list? The Tax Foundation has a slide show to accompany the report you can access with a click here. There are many more tax resources online at www.taxfoundation.org
Scammers Target Small Firms! Why the FBI is Involved & What You Can Do to Protect Your Firm
There is an e-mail scam you may want to alert your small business staff to watch out for. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into an online scam targeting businesses and individuals. The scammers are using a series of official looking e-mails
requesting financial and bank information as part of an FBI investigation. The sender is masquerading as a FBI investigator trying to obtain bank records from the recipients, and threatens legal action if the request isn't answered.
The FBI never requires victims or subjects of investigations to provide bank account information via email. Many of the bogus e-mails currently in circulation claim to be an "official order" from the FBI's Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division.
If you receive a similar e-mail request you can report it to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.IC3.gov
