Small Business

The use of a company car is tax free to the extent you use the car for business.
If you use the vehicle for personal use your employer has the resposibility of calculating taxable income to you.
You are required to maintain records such as a mileage log to document and substantiate your business use.
You are not sunject to additional taxable income if your vehicle is considered a limited personal use vehicle.
Llimited personal use vehicles include garbage, dump, flatbed or refrigerated trucks, hearses or ambulances, one passenger delivery trucks, police, fire or public safety vehicles, school and passenger buses and farm vehicles

The employer must report as income in Box 1 of Form W-2, (a) the discount portion of stock acquired by the exercise of an employee stock purchase plan option upon disposition of the stock, and (b) the spread (between the exercise price and the fair market value of the stock at the time of exercise) upon a disqualifying disposition of stock acquired by the exercise of an incentive stock option or an employee stock purchase plan option.
An employer must report the excess of the fair market value of stock received upon exercise of a nonstatutory stock option over the amount paid for the stock option on Form W-2 in boxes 1, 3 (up to the social security wage base), 5, and in box 12 using the code “V"
For more information about employee stock options, Speak to your local CPA or see sections 421, 422, and 423 of the Internal Revenue Code and their related regulations.

You can exclude the value of a minor cost ( "de minimis") benefit you provide to an employee from the employee's wages.
A de minimis benefit is any property or service you provide to an employee that has so little value (taking into account how frequently you provide similar benefits to your employees) that accounting for it would be unreasonable or administratively impracticable.
Examples of de minimis benefits include the following. Occasional meal money and taxi fares for overtime work.
Transportation fare.
Occasional parties or picnics for employees and their guests.
Occasional tickets for theater or sporting events.
Personal use of an employer-provided cell phone provided primarily for noncompensatory business purposes.
Holiday gifts, other than cash, with a low fair market value.
Group-term life insurance payable on the death of an employee's spouse or dependent if the face amount is not more than $2,000.

An employer can exclude the value of an employee's use of an On-Premises gym (or property leased by the employer, not necessarily located on the main business premises) or other athletic facility you operate from an employee's wages if substantially all use of the facility during the calendar year is by your employees, their spouses, and their dependent children.
Athletic facilities include gyms, golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools.
The facilities must be available to all employees on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Generally, the cost of driving to work in a commuter highway vehicle between the employee's home and work place, employer provided parking, transit passes, bicycle commuting reimbursements are tax free.
You can generally exclude the value of transportation benefits that you provide to an employee during 2013 from the employee's wages up to the following limits.
$245 per month for combined commuter highway vehicle transportation and transit passes. ($240 in 2012)
$245 per month for qualified parking. ($240 in 2012)
For a calendar year, $20 multiplied by the number of qualified bicycle commuting months during that year for qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement of expenses incurred during the year.

Each expense should be listed on a proposed budget sheet. Costs should be researched. Some items on your budget sheet will be "fixed costs" in that they have no relationship to the cost of your product or service. Other costs are called variable costs as they are directly related to the services or quantity of products you sell. To learn more go to FundingRoadmap.com

The purpose of a business plan is to guide you in successfully operating a business. Preparing a plan forces the entrepreneur to consider all aspects of the business and to confront any problems the plan may show you along the way. FundingRoadmap.com

It summarizes both your vision for the company and your blueprint for the company’s operating success. The business plan is a written guide that details the start-up and the future direction of your company. For more information go to FundingRoadmap.com

A business plan is comprehensive planning document which clearly describes the business developmental objective of an existing or proposed business. The plan outlines where the resources needed to accomplish the objective will be obtained and utilized. It should also guide you to act on your intentions and benchmark your steps along the way and be written on a format that allows for collaboration among your employees and partners. For more information go to FundingRoadmap.com