Our Blog and News
This Month’s Posts
New Service – SCHWARTZ & SCHWARTZ PC Offers Dental Practice Valuation Service
Looking to get your practice valued? Maybe you’re planning to have an Associate buy into your practice. Perhaps you need to know what your practice is worth for estate planning or financial planning purposes. Or you might just be taking this step as you prepare to...
Using Donor Advised Funds for Charitable Giving (12/31 Deadline)
By Alex Oliver, CFP, CRPF, Wealth Advisor - First National Corporation With Giving Tuesday on the horizon and as you make your final gifts for 2020, I want to suggest an increasingly popular tool for your charitable contributions. First, it should be emphasized that...
COVID-19 Guidelines For Practice Owners With Staff
With COVID-19 sadly on the increase, employers are asking us more questions than ever about their responsibilities to pay their staff who cannot come to work for COVID related reasons. Basically, if you have an employee who cannot come in to work for COVID related...
IRS Announces That Expenses Paid With PPP Loan To Be Forgiven Are Non-Deductible In 2020
On November 17th, the IRS issued guidance on how the PPP Loan forgiveness impacts how businesses will deduct expenses paid with the PPP funds. According to the IRS Bulletin at: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USIRS/bulletins/2acfa3f: Revenue Ruling...
IRS Code Section 139 Allows Your Practice To Make Tax-Free Payments To You And Selected Staff During The COVID-19 Pandemic
Code Section 139 starts with this general rule: Gross income shall not include any amount received by an individual as a qualified disaster relief payment. In other words, your practice deducts any money paid out to you and selected staff under Section 139 while you...
Small Business Energy Exemption
Administered by the Massachusetts DOR, qualifying small businesses may be exempt from paying taxes on energy. A qualifying small business must have had gross income of less than $1,000,000 in the prior year and anticipate less than $1,000,000 in the current year. The...
Schedule C and PPP Loan
Many of our business owners have had questions with regard to the application for PPP loan forgiveness. If you are a Schedule C filer (sole proprietor or single-member LLC) and are unsure about the next steps to take with regard to your PPP loan, our firm’s guidance...
What To Do If You Received Notices From One of These Agencies
Did you recently receive a notice from one of the agencies below? If so, we’ve detailed below what steps you need to take. Notice from Dept. of Family and Medical Leave Health Insurance Responsibility Disclosure from MA Dept of Revenue MA DUA Tax Notices Fraudulent...
Alex’s Advice Corner – Year end Reminders
From Alex Oliver, CFP, CRPS - Wealth Advisor - First National Corporation With two months to go until 2021, First National Corporation wants to ensure you are doing everything within your financial plan to mitigate taxes. Here are a few quick reminders to consider as...
Social Security Max Increases To $142,800 For 2021
Most years, the government bumps up the maximum Social Security taxes that you can pay. For 2021, the maximum wage base jumps to $142,800, an increase of $5,100, or 3.7%, over the max of $137,700 that was in place for 2020. At a rate of 6.2%, the maximum Social...
Last Month’s Posts
Massachusetts Announces COVID-19 Grants For Small Businesses
According to information available at MGCC: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has made $50.8 million in grants available to support small businesses, microenterprises, and their employees, families and communities. Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation (MGCC) will...
Beware Of Scammers Coming To Your Practice Posing As SBA Agents
Please be aware of a brand new scam involving people impersonating the Small Business Association. The imposters claim to be conducting "site visits" on behalf of the SBA in connection with PPP and EIDL loans taken by most small business owners since March. When...
What To Do If A Fraudulent Unemployment Claim Was Filed Under Your Name
It’s a sad state of affairs in our country when scammers are preying on each state’s unemployment funds. We first posted info on this big problem a few months ago at:...
HHS Announces Additional Provider Relief Funds. Application Due 11/6
Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), announced $20 billion in new funding for providers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. Most healthcare practice owners should...
SBA Announces Simplified Forgiveness Applications For PPP Loans Under $50K
The SBA recently issued Form 3508S (https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/PPP-Loan-Forgiveness-Application-Form-3508S.pdf) which greatly simplifies the loan forgiveness application for practices that received PPP Loans of less than $50k. If you complete the...
2/15/21 Deadline For Recipients of HHS Provider Relief Fund to Self-Report
According to the HHS at: https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/cares-act-provider-relief-fund/reporting-auditing/index.html: "All recipients of more than $10,000 of Provider Relief Fund (PRF) payments are required to comply with the reporting requirements described in the...
Are You Required To Pay Staff Who Can’t Work Due To Childcare Issues?
Q: I have an assistant who has two small kids and has not been coming to the office since she does not have babysitting. She wants to know if she is eligible to still be paid by my office and, if so, how do we go about paying her and do we get a tax credit on the...
Tabitha’s Tips: Convenient And Inexpensive Patient Payment Plan Option
By Guest Writer - Tabitha Lugo, Shelley Renee Practice Consulting Q: I have a quick question for you. We wanted to see if you can give some guidance or any resources regarding payment plans and specifically payment plan arrangement documents. For example, we have an...
How To Pay Off the EIDL Loan
The SBA made it very easy for practice owners to receive an EIDL loan of up to $150k with a fixed 3.75% interest rate over a 30-year term. And a lot of practice owners decided to accept this EIDL loan. As we posted:...
No Rush On Your PPP Loan Forgiveness Application
Practice owners who received the PPP loan earlier this year had 24 weeks to spend the funds on certain payroll and facility expenses to qualify for full forgiveness of that loan. For many of our clients, the 24-week Covered Period has recently ended. Did you know that...
Posts From Our Professional Network
Using Donor Advised Funds for Charitable Giving (12/31 Deadline)
By Alex Oliver, CFP, CRPF, Wealth Advisor - First National Corporation With Giving Tuesday on the horizon and as you make your final gifts for 2020, I want to suggest an increasingly popular tool for your charitable contributions. First, it should be emphasized that...
Alex’s Advice Corner – Year end Reminders
From Alex Oliver, CFP, CRPS - Wealth Advisor - First National Corporation With two months to go until 2021, First National Corporation wants to ensure you are doing everything within your financial plan to mitigate taxes. Here are a few quick reminders to consider as...
Real Estate Conversations To Boost Practice Profitability During COVID-19
By Guest Writer: Stefan Zelich, Broker, CARR Healthcare Every landlord is different. Same goes for every deal too. We’ve seen some landlords give concessions we typically wouldn’t, whiles others are now willing to budge off their pre-Covid pricing. How to approach a...
Tabitha’s Tips: Convenient And Inexpensive Patient Payment Plan Option
By Guest Writer - Tabitha Lugo, Shelley Renee Practice Consulting Q: I have a quick question for you. We wanted to see if you can give some guidance or any resources regarding payment plans and specifically payment plan arrangement documents. For example, we have an...
Five Steps to A Successful Dental Employee Performance Appraisal
From Guest Writers Mariana Diaz, Executive Coach and Don Khouri, Managing Director, Fortune Northeast Creating and setting a culture that welcomes consistent feedback is crucial to improving team dynamics for many reasons. First, it helps to develop a sense of...
Out From Behind the Covid Wall – From Guest Writer Brenda Loan Baker
From Guest Writer Brenda Loan Baker, Executive Coach, Fortune Management Northeast On every social media platform you can find numerous memes about 2020 being the worst year ever. For most of us this lock-down has been going on since mid-March, seven months now. To...
Great Promotion From Our Friends at Bank of America Practice Solutions
Stefan Green and Dave Miller of Bank of America Practice Solutions recently notified us of their low interest rate promotion of just 1% for 18 months and then fixed for the remainder of the term at 3.43%. To qualify, please apply by 12/1/20. According to Stefan, "Dave...
Tabitha’s Tip: Best Practices To Handle Old Patient Receivables – From Guest Writer Tabitha Lugo
Q: I've been in practice for over 20 years and my books are full of uncollectible Accounts Receivables. Do you have any best practices for how to handle this? A:?What I usually suggest to clients is that once they turn an account over to a collection agency, or in...
Seven Ways To Get Your Reluctant Patients Back
Guest Writer Don Khouri, Managing Director, Fortune Management Northeast As healthcare practices continue to reach out to patients who need to be scheduled, one of the biggest challenges they face is the wide variation in comfort level their patients have about coming...
New Book And Website Launched To Help Dentists With Their Finances
Congratulations to our long-time client Dr. Sam Shamardi for writing and publishing his book: "The Financial Survival Guide for Dentists". "As you know all too well, dental school doesn't prepare us at all for business, which is our biggest issue by far. My book...