Extending Online Tax to the Cloud
We’ve written about online sales tax multiple times before, but it’s a complicated topic without a simple solution. And that’s why we keep coming back to it! In the past we’ve discussed how states are attempting to extend the definition of nexus to broaden their online tax reach, or potential legislation coming through Congress. But one area we haven’t really taken a look at is the question of cloud-based services. How do they fit into the online sales tax debate?
About Cloud-Based Services
More and more, consumers are opting for digital versions of software, music, DVDs and games over physical copies. They purchase the rights to use these goods online and stream them directly from the “cloud” to their computer, tablet or smartphone without ever holding a tangible item that can be taxed in the traditional manner.
Consumers aren’t the only ones relying on the cloud. Businesses are continuing to move their company’s storage to the ominous “cloud,” hiring third-party cloud-based organizations rather than needing to rely on their own data-management. Many companies are therefore entering the software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) models.Read more
Jumpstart Your Rainmaking
As a professional, do you ever find yourself getting a little complacent? Do you find that there are days when it’s easier just to stay in the comfort zone than to venture out and stretch your boundaries? Of course! We all do. But when we have too many of those days in the comfort zone – and they stretch to weeks or months (hopefully not years!), it can be difficult to re-energize yourself and move forward with goals, visions, etc. That’s why, it’s so important to have a written plan for your goals and to revisit it regularly. And that’s true not just for your business or professional goals but also your personal goals. How often have you said something like, “This is the year that I learn to speak French!” But then you don’t buy the books, or the online classes, or register for a live class. And at the end of the year – amazingly, you don’t speak French!
One of my goals during 2015 was to finally (finally!) fulfill my dream of developing a training program for accountants to assist them with generating sales and building their practices. I unveiled my “Jumpstart Your Rainmaking” program in late October, and am excited to put it into full motion (see below) in 2016! But to avoid some confusion for my clients and long-time colleagues, I wanted to share a little more. Read more
California Competes Tax Credit Program
For some companies, the California Competes Tax Credit Program may be a gift from the government during this holiday season (or early 2016). This program is designed to assist companies that plan to re-locate to or stay and expand in the state of California. It appears that more businesses should take advantage of this program which has a budget of over $200 million in tax credit annually. There are three filing periods for the current fiscal year of 2015-2016:
- July 20, 2015, through August 17, 2015 ($75 million available)
- January 4, 2016, through January 25, 2016 ($75 million available)
- March 7, 2016, through March 28, 2016 ($50.9 million plus any remaining unallocated amounts from the previous application periods)
The upcoming committee meetings to review and approve applications are as follows:
- April 14, 2016
- June 16, 2016
Even though the first filing period has passed, it is not too late to apply in January. In the most recent committee meeting held in November, less than $45 million out of the $75 million available was requested for approval. A total of 59 large companies filed for $33 million in tax credits and only 30 small businesses filed for $10 million of tax credits. The California government has created this pool of tax credits for businesses to thrive in the industry, and a huge portion of it is left untouched.Read more
Rainmaking - Being Thankful!
In our last few Rainmaking blog posts, we’ve covered the active and passive networking components to the Rainmaking process, as well as follow-up strategies. As our most recent blog discussed, following up with new contacts within 48 hours is a great way to let them know you are really interested in getting to know them and would like to continue the relationship. Similarly when a colleague sends a referral your way, it’s great to quickly thank them for that referral. That seems logical enough, but do we really always do it? This Thanksgiving week is a good time to talk about that!
Being Grateful
In the professional service business, many of us rely on referrals from colleagues or other clients. My business is no different. In fact, because I am in a very niche market (multi-state tax consulting), much of my business comes from referrals from other CPAs (in firms that don’t have an in-house state tax practice), attorneys, temporary CFOs, and from current or previous clients. I spend much of my networking time and outreach directed at those kinds of referral partners, because when a trusted advisor recommends me to their client, it most often ends up becoming a client for me. And I’m always very grateful to those who recommend me.
Saying Thank you!
So, what’s the best way to truly say “thank you” to the person who referred you? It likely depends upon the nature of your relationship. Is it a formal referral arrangement, or more casual? Is it likely to be a recurring referral relationship? The way you say “thank you” could depend on the answers to those questions. Following are some possible ways to express gratitude for a referral.Read more
[Thanksgiving] The Taxability of Turkey Dinner
As we get ready to take a few days off and perhaps join the millions of Americans traveling this holiday, we thought we’d invite you to ponder the question: What do taxes have to do with Thanksgiving? As it turns out, they’re directly related to your holiday meal! In honor of Turkey Day on Thursday, here’s a look at the taxability of your dinner.
What items are taxable?
Although you may already own some of these items, sales tax was likely included on their purchase:
- Place settings, platters, flatware, etc.
- Candles, centerpieces and other décor items like table runners, leaves from craft stores, etc.
- Wine and spirits (in fact, depending on where it’s purchased you may pay additional taxes as it’s not uncommon for alcoholic items to be taxed at higher rates)
Focus on Pennsylvania
For this month’s focus, we decided to showcase Pennsylvania as I recently came back from the AFWA National Conference held in Pittsburgh. One of the original colonies, the state has had a head start on others in terms of innovation and community development. The first baseball stadium, the first daily newspaper, the first computer and the first American flag were all built or created in Pennsylvania. If you love history, Pennsylvania should be one of your must-see destinations.
Business Climate
Pennsylvania lives up to its nickname the “Keystone State.” It has an abundance of natural resources, medical and educational institutions that it uses to its advantage. Pennsylvania is the second-largest natural gas electricity producer. The State also boasts a bountiful production in its agriculture. It had more than $2 billion in agricultural commodities in 2014 and its food manufacturing industry is quickly growing. The state is home to top-caliber educational institutions such as University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, Lehigh University, and Pennsylvania State University; all of which supply the state with a skilled workforce.Read more
Rainmaking - Follow Thru Strategies
In the last few weeks’ blog posts, we’ve covered the direct and indirect networking components to the rainmaking process. Getting in front of the right people, both in face-to-face settings and with your good indirect or more passive strategies like a good website, compelling blog, etc. is key in building your potential client base and referral base. Another big part of the Rainmaking strategy, and maybe even the most important, is to follow up with potential customers.
Follow-Thru Strategies
Follow-thru should be the easy part of the strategy! And yet, this is the place that most people drop the ball. As such, it’s also an area that you can easily outperform your competition! If most people drop the ball, you will stand out for following up.
Imagine this: You go to a great networking event. You have several good conversations, you exchange business cards with a few potential leads, and you even think that some are likely to really need your services in the upcoming months. You put those business cards in your purse, pocket or wallet with good intentions of following up. The next day, you get to the office, start working on your to-do list, answer emails and phone calls, catch up around the water-cooler, and forget that stack of business cards. If you don’t follow up with the people in the stack that even MAY have been good contacts for you, you’ve wasted your time at the networking event. Why? Because the other person you exchanged cards with is equally as unlikely to follow up with you. Alas, time, effort and likely money have been squandered.Read more
[Case Study] Washington State’s Economic Nexus and Apportionment
The state of Washington has a couple of interesting statutes they adopted in September as a way to increase the number of businesses with nexus in the state.
- Nexus for click-through retail transactions
- Economic nexus threshold for wholesalers
Both provisions establish additional requirements for out-of-state businesses to pay the state’s Business and Occupation (B&O) tax and file in the state depending on the type and amount of business they’re conducting with its residents.
Keep reading for a summary of the two provisions. As you can see, neither of them affects sales tax. We’ve seen more and more states adopt these types of laws for income or franchise tax. However, note that the B&O tax is not an income tax; it’s a gross receipts tax.Read more
Rainmaking – Indirect Strategies
Welcome to the “Rainmaker Series” Friday blog. Hopefully you’ve noticed that I’m dedicating Fridays to tips for accounting and financial professionals in the art of rainmaking. We’ve discussed that bringing in revenue (“rainmaking”) is not magic, but is essential to growing your service based consulting practice. Last week, we focused on direct strategies (meeting people in one-on-one networking situations) to begin developing relationships with potential clients and leads.
This week, I’m going to share the benefits of using indirect strategies in conjunction with the direct strategies to continue building that relationship at the potential customer’s leisure!
Indirect Strategies
Building the relationship at the customer’s leisure? What the heck does that mean? Quite simply, it is about allowing your potential target customer to find out about you, not in a face-to-face environment, but virtually, when it fits into their schedule. I’m talking about things like a robust website, informative newsletter, interesting blog, and catchy social media, to name a few. The key is that these items are still generated by you to send the messages that you’d like to deliver, but they can be viewed passively by your audience when they are ready to consume them – on-demand, if you will. Obviously, the more compelling the information you put out there on your own behalf, the better the chance to grow your audience, and ultimately, your client base as you are viewed as a subject matter expert.
Since there are various ways a potential client can consume the information about you, it’s also important to use a variety of these methods.
Website: It is important to regularly review your own website to see what others are seeing, and also to ensure that the information on it hasn’t become stale. Does your homepage accurately reflect what your company does? Is it easy to navigate through the website? Is your value proposition clear? Have you added calls to action to various sections? Have you incorporated videos? Is it easy for someone to find out more? If the answers to these questions are all “YES”, then you are doing a great job. If not, consider what it would take to get to yes. Maybe an overall website analysis is in order.
Newsletter: A friend and colleague told me many years ago that the key to a newsletter is consistency. Provide quality information in a format that your customers or targets will begin to recognize and expect at periodic intervals (preferably at least monthly). That will get them into a habit of reading your content. The content should also be somewhat consistent. As a consultant or service provider, a good newsletter layout may be to offer a useful technical article related to something you consult about, plus a guest article from someone in your network, plus a “what’s happening” section to talk about your upcoming speaking topics or other items of interest. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be very long. I’ve learned over time that consistency and short (but compelling) content are more important than length!
Blogs: What is true for the newsletter is also true of the blog. Consistent blogging (for instance, posting every week on Wednesdays) is also key because it keeps your website fresh with new content. While search engine optimization is a very complicated science of its own, there is evidence that regularly updating your website (by way of posting blogs) is a way to keep the search-engine-gods coming back regularly as well – and that’s always good! Also, blogs are a great way to multi-purpose your written materials. Blog articles can become fodder for your newsletter, or a great way to build credibility with your client about your industry trends.
Social media: With so many choices out there, it’s hard to want to spend a lot of time on social media when the images and posts disappear so quickly. However, it is amazing how many touches you are likely to get just from people seeing your name and an article or interesting fact or link to a relevant story in your industry. A combination of different social media tools is also a good idea. Where do your clients and targets “hang out”? Is it mostly Linked-In? Facebook? Twitter? Google+? Instagram? Something else? Hanging out there with them will get you noticed.
We’ve just scratched the surface on these indirect strategies, and there are several other sources of indirect touches, including podcasts and recorded webinars (particularly those that can be accessed for several weeks or months after the live event has taken place). If you are fortunate to have been interviewed on camera and have a short video feed of that, it can be prominently displayed on your website, as can published articles or other media quotes. The key with indirect strategies (and direct strategies as well) is to determine what works for you and is fun. If it’s not fun, you won’t do it consistently. And that will undermine your own best intentions.
Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed reading this blog (at your leisure), and will come back next week, when I’ll address follow-thru strategies. Spoiler alert – my lesson from that blog will be “If you’re not going to do the follow up, you might as well not bother with the direct or indirect strategies!”
Monika Miles is President of Miles Consulting Group, a firm specializing in multi-state tax consulting for middle market businesses. Clients include technology, manufacturing, software and SaaS based companies doing businesses across state lines. Miles Consulting Group assists them in determining the sales tax and income tax ramifications of creating a taxable presence in a state and how to address these issues with the various states. When she’s not assisting clients with multi-state tax issues, she passionately shares Rainmaker strategies with other professional services firms. Join us for our “Jumpstart Your Rainmaking” webinar series coming up in January. Click here for more information.
Rainmaking - Direct Prospecting Strategies
Welcome to the “Rainmaker Series” portion of my blog. If you’ve checked us out, you’ll notice that I’m dedicating Fridays to tips for accounting and financial professionals in the art of rainmaking. We’ve discussed that driving home revenue (or rainmaking) is not necessarily magic, but is essential to growing your service based/consulting practice. Last week, we talked about defining your target market and determining where to find them.
This week (and next), we’ll distinguish between two strategies – the direct s indirect strategies that we can employ in order to put ourselves in front of the perfect potential client to begin building a relationship that might ultimately lead to business.
Direct Strategies
How often do you go to a networking event, buy a glass or two of your favorite beverage, hand out 15 business cards and expect to turn any (or all) of them into business that night? And how’s that working for you? We are all, hopefully, lucky enough to be at the right event, with the right people, and meet just the right person that needs our services today. We exchange business cards that night and by the next week, the prospect signs us up for a large consulting project. If this happens to you often, quit reading this article, and instead, check out my recent blog on California Tax Conformity! But seriously, if this were a regular occurrence, you wouldn’t be wondering how to drum up business and implement some new strategies. The truth is that in selling services, our clients need to trust us first. And that generally takes some time. In fact, in general, the larger the project you are trying to sell, the more time it will take to win that trust.
So, how do you do it? The easy answer is to build a relationship. I’m in a business development group called ProVisors. Our motto is “Know, Like, Trust, Refer”. The premise is that we meet each other monthly in a group setting, then meet in smaller groups during the month, and in the process get to know each other and understand each other’s business offerings. We also transition to liking each other and then trusting each other. Finally, we identify opportunities to bring our fellow members into business situations and refer them to provide value to our clients. It’s a great process that takes some time. Participating in a group like this is something I call a “direct” strategy. I’m actively building relationships with fellow professionals who are likely to have clients in my “perfect client” space. Once I’ve gained their trust through our interactions, they will hopefully refer me when their client begins to do business across state lines and requires a nexus or taxability review.
What are some other direct strategies?
- Live public speaking on technical topics (your specialty) to qualified audiences
- Public speaking on some webinars (if somewhat interactive and a qualified audience)
- Attending or sponsoring trade shows or conferences where your ideal client hangs out
- Becoming a member of industry networking groups and regularly attending or becoming a member of the board of your local chapter
- Engaging in breakfast or lunch meetings with current clients and/or referral partners that can help open the door to future relationships.
I view a direct strategy as one that involves interaction with people where both parties are present at the same time. And to me, in my business, these are the most powerful.
Everything else is an indirect strategy – good information out there about you that people can view at their leisure – like this blog, your website, webinar recordings, etc. I hope you will return at your leisure (or next Friday) to read more about how a good indirect strategy, coupled with your direct strategies, can provide a well-rounded foundation for moving your rainmaking plan forward.
In the meantime, I wish you happy direct (and directed) networking!
Interested in learning more? Check out our 3 part webinar series - "Jumpstart Your Rainmaking", starting November 9th!
Monika Miles is President of Miles Consulting Group, a firm specializing in multi-state tax consulting for middle market businesses. Clients include technology, manufacturing, software and SaaS based companies doing businesses across state lines. Miles Consulting Group assist them in determining the sales tax and income tax ramifications of creating a taxable presence in a state and how to address these issues with the various states. When she’s not assisting clients with multi-state tax issues, she passionately shares Rainmaker strategies with other professional services firms.
