US Financial News

Share Only In Georgia! Matt Grattan writes: We recently attended the SAP B1 ASUG Summit in Atlanta.  SAP continues to gain momentum downstream with SMB companies through the adoption of the Business One platform providing best of breed functionality to support a company’s order to cash processes. One of the key themes from the show was SAP’s recognition of the growing importance of Cloud or SaaS-based solutions for supporting specific processes that fall outside of the core functions of the ERP platform.  Solutions that are easy to implement and support that add value to the SAP Business One customer experience. AvaTax for SAP Business One is directly aligned with that vision, providing a SaaS-based solution for enabling end-to-end sales tax automation and compliance. Learn more about how one of our valued SAP Business One customers implemented AvaTax by reading the Proceq success story. If you’d like to learn more, call Avalara at 206-826-4900 or visit us at www.avalara.com. No related content found.

| Tags: Asug Summit, B1 Asug, B1 Asug Summit, Georgia
Posted January 25, 2012 by Oliver Blake under Financial News

Credit card fraud is a problem that affects one in 10 Americans and costs us all in the long run.  Even though, under federal law, you’re only accountable for up to $50 of fraudulent charges, that still means that the credit card companies are on the hook for millions.  So, it’s in their interest to keep an eye out for possible fraud. And they’re getting so good at it.

How?  Computers, databases, and psychological profiling.  Here’s the anatomy of spotting, and stopping, a fraudster.

First, we have to talk about your card’s history.  People tend to use credit cards in certain ways: for example, you may use one card pretty much exclusively for gas and groceries, or you may use one to shop online.  That data is put into a database, and each purchase is compared against it as you use it.  This sets up your card’s “behavior pattern,” if you will: how it’s used, where it’s used, and so on.  These tend to be pretty reliable; most of us are fairly set in our ways, or at least our spending habits.

Now, imagine that your card information is stolen.  This can be done in any number of ways: credit card skimmers attached to gas pumps, database breaches of vendors, and so on.  The point is, the thief now has a credit card.  What he doesn’t have is any real information about that card.  In fact, depending on how he got it, he doesn’t even know if it still works.  So, he has to try it out, and he has to act quickly once he knows it’s valid.  This is called a “testing charge.”

Thieves tend to do this in a few ways.  If they have just the card information, they’ll generally go online and, for example, buy an MP3 or two: something cheap and easy to download that tells them the card is valid.  Or, if they h

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| Tags: Card, Credit Card
Posted January 17, 2012 by Hanna Silver under Global Finance

Club Med, renowned the world over for providing all-inclusive vacation packages, is now wading into the luxury property market. Its first offering is a chalet development in the ski region of Valmorel, France that epitomizes the company’s philosophy of luxurious living. Apartment buyers will be able to take advantage of all included amenities like restaurants, bars and ski passes as well as have the freedom to exchange spaced for vacations with other owners in the growing Club Med network. Club Med execs say the added perks amount to a value of €50,000 for a family of four. For more on this continue reading the following article from Property Wire. Club Med has launched its first ever luxury chalet and apartment development in the ski-ing resort of Valmorel, France. The company, which was founded with the aim of offering all inclusive holiday packages based on the values of friendliness, happiness and nature, has decided to build luxury villas and apartments and sell them to property investors who could enjoy the same kind of values that holiday makers had enjoyed for half a century. Club Med Villas and Chalets isn’t just about buying a piece of property, it is about buying into a concept that is backed by a global business. There Read more…

| Tags: Club Med, Market, Property Market
Posted January 12, 2012 by Oliver Blake under Financial News

There are a lot of factors that go into making up your credit score, from how often you pay your bills on time to the age of your various accounts.  When you’re trying to clean up your credit report, knowing which areas to focus on can make the credit repair process much easier and go by quicker than you may have initially thought.

This article will focus on the other side of the coin; the stuff you DON’T have to worry about.  Because while knowing what you do have to worry about taking care of is important, knowing what doesn’t matter as much to credit repair can free up any additional worries you may have.  With that said, here are 5 things you don’t have to worry about ever affecting your credit score.

• Your income.  You’ll typically find personal information like past addresses and employment info listed in your credit report, but one area of your finances that you don’t have to worry about showing up is your monthly income, both past and present.  Creditors and lenders are more interested in what you do with money than how much of it you have.

• Your rent.  While your credit card and car payments will routinely show up on your credit report, you won’t have to worry about your past rental history coming back to haunt you.  Unless you consistently are late on your monthly rent payments and your landlords are trying to evict you, this is another area you don’t need worry about.

• Account overdrafts.  If your bank account is ever in the red for whatever reason, you can rest a little easier knowing it won’t show up in your credit history.  While overdrafts are generally something you want to avoid anyway (those fees are a real pain), your bank won’t typically take the time to beat you while you’re down and report the overdraft to the credit bureaus.

• Your utilities.  Just like your past rental history, you won’t have to worry about utility bills showing up on your credit report, either.  Anything from electric and cell phone bills to insurance accounts generally stays off your report unless they fall into collections.

• Any type of credit counseling or credit repair services.  Some people are afraid to seek any type of credit counseling or credit repair service because they’re afraid it might show up on their credit reports.  You can rest easy knowing that no one reports your use of a credit counseling service to the credit bureaus; you’re allowed a cheat sheet on this exam.

| Tags: Credit Score, Score
Posted January 11, 2012 by John Wane under Financial Guru

After hitting highs in October 2008, consumer debt has shown steady declines and now sits near pre-recession levels, Equifax said in a recent report.

Equifax’s National Credit Trends Report revealed that total consumer debt now sits at $11.2 trillion, which is almost identical to the $11.1 trillion mark established back before the recession in 2006.

Total consumer debt topped out at $12.4 trillion back in October 2008.

According to Equifax, more than $436 billion in new credit originated in the first seven months of 2011 (January through July), which represents the highest total in 3 years (for that time period). “New credit” includes auto loans, consumer loans, home equity lines of credit, student loans, and credit cards.

Despite overall debt numbers falling, the credit card category is showing an increase in usage in debt. Between the four months of June through September 2011, both bank credit cards and retail credit cards – as a whole – saw outstanding debt increase.

More than 11.3 new auto loans originated in the first seven months of 2011, Equifax said, a 13 percent increase year-over-year.

On the flipside, home equity loan activity continues to decline. In Septem

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| Tags: Consumer Debt, Levels
Posted January 6, 2012 by Hanna Silver under Global Finance

Parole Board 1:  ”That name is ‘recidivism.’”

Parole Board 2:  ”Repeat offender!”

Parole Board 1:  ”Not a very pretty name is it, HI?”

HI:  ”No sir, that’s one bonehead name, but that ain’t me no more.”

Parole Board 1:  ”You aren’t just telling us what we want to hear, are you?”

HI:  ”No sir. No way.”

Parole Board 2:  ”‘Cause we just want to hear the truth.”

HI:  ”Well, then I guess I am telling you what you want to hear.”

Parole Board 1:  ”Boy, didn’t we just tell you not to do that?”

HI:  ”Yessir.”

Parole Board 1:  ”Okay then.”

Please forgive my homage to the Coen Brothers’ classic, Raising Arizona. But, it fits perfectly with today’s post. This is the second post this week in which the topic has been the type o

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| Tags: Name, Name People
Posted January 3, 2012 by John Wane under Financial Guru

Years ago, I found myself sitting in law school in Moot Court wearing an oversized itchy blue suit. It was a horrible experience. In a desperate attempt to avoid anything like that in the future I enrolled in a tax course. I loved it. I signed up for another. Before I knew it, in addition to my JD, I had a LL.M Taxation. I needed only to don my cape…. taxgirl® was born. Today, I live and work in Philadelphia, PA, one of the best cities in the world . I landed in the City of Brotherly Love by way of Temple University School of Law. While at law school, I interned at the estates attorney division of the IRS. At IRS, I participated in the review and audit of federal estate tax returns. I even took the lead on a successful audit. At audit, opposing counsel read my report, looked at his file and said, “Gentleman, she’s exactly right.” I nearly fainted. It was a short jump from there to practicing, teaching, writing and breathing tax.

| Posted January 1, 2012 by Hanna Silver under Global Finance

The IRS has released 2012 contribution limits and updated eligibility rules for two of the most popular small business retirement plans : the SEP IRA and Simple IRA.

SEP IRA

A SEP is a popular and widely used retirement plan management approach because it provides self employed owners or small business owners with a few staff a simplified method to make contributions toward their employees’ retirement and, if self-employed, their own retirement.

For 2012, the annual contributions an employer makes to an employee’s SEP-IRA cannot exceed the lesser of:

• 25% of compensation, or
• $50,000 . This is an $1000 increase from last year
• Up to $250,000 of an employee’s compensation may be considered

The same limits on contributions made to employees’ SEP-IRAs also apply to contributions made to a self-employed individual’s SEP-IRA.  Contributions must be made in cash and you have up to April 15, to contribute for the past year’s SEP IRA. A SEP provides high maximum contribution limits and relatively low setup cost, but an employer sponsored Individual 401k may allow a greater contribution at the same income level. Also, for th

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| Tags: Business Retirement, Business Retirement Plans, Plans, Retirement Plans
Posted December 29, 2011 by Oliver Blake under Financial News