The Tech Gap

Now Rental Property Expenses Require 1099 Filing ….

Today President Obama signed the Small Business
Jobs and Credit Act of 2010. Lots of provisions for “job creation” including one to expand, even more, the already burdensome 1099 filing requirements. More work for accountants, I suppose …..

Rental property expense payments made after Dec. 31, 2010 will require a form 1099 for payments of $600 or more to a service provider (a plumber, painter or accountant) “in the course of earning rental income.” There are limited exceptions for certain military personnel who rent their personal residence on a temporary basis, and for “individuals with only minimal amounts” as determined by the Treasury Secretary in regulations and “hardship cases”, also determined by regulations. [Yeah, right --- good luck with THAT! So rental property now looks more like a “trade or business”. I wonder if that means a change in passive loss deductibility? That’s a JOKE --- I really DO know better!]

I suggest you immediately begin testing your clients’ systems to make sure they’re robust enough to handle this extra reporting. 

gll

Look-see! It’s Looxcie!

Thanks to Rob Chandler, CEO of RealTime Bookkeeping.com, for showing me this cool little gadget.

Looxcie is a small, light, wearable camcorder system that, in addition to being a Bluetooth headset for your smartphone, can record everything you see. It fits over the ear so it points where you look. It is always on and always videoing. if you want to permanently capture something you just saw you simply press the instant clip button to save a clip of the last thirty seconds. There is also a smartphone application and Bluetooth connection, which allows you to view, edit, and share video via email, text. You can also post directly to Facebook or YouTube. The device uses a dual processor system for video and Bluetooth provides communication between your smartphone and Looxcie. It’s pretty lightweight -- less than 1 oz – and the manufacturer claims battery life of up to 4 hrs of continuous use. Video clips are date and time stamped and then as MP4 files. has enough temporary storage for five hours of continuous video capture, so you can wear it without worrying whether you'll run out of storage space. Once the five-hour storage capacity is reached, new video automatically replaces the oldest video. That means you always have the most recent five hours of video. Resolution is ½ VGA. The Looxcie was relaeased o September 15th and is available on Amazon for about $200.

It does NOT “stream” video --- which is a huge drawback. That said, it is pretty cool --- if you have friends that “over-post” on Facebook and have no concept of “TMI” then I’d suggest you do NOT tell them about the Looxcie!!

gll

Finally – a Light in the Center of Social Media Darkness!

Today I was introduced to Flowtown -- a social media marketing platform that helps businesses transform email contacts into engaged customers. After setting up a free account you enter an email address—I chose to upload a subset of my Outlook contacts as a CSV —and then sit back and watch as Flowtown identifies who is where on the “social web” and develops a nice report of everyone on your list. The first 50 contacts are free. Flowtown informed me that it would cost ~$75 to process the remaining 1,415 contacts. (There is a varying monthly fee of $17 to $197 for one of 4 levels and a “per contact” charge of about 4.5 cents.)

The “Customer Insight Report” gives you the macro view of your customer list, and allows you to drill down for additional info and illustrates quite well where and how one would want to concentrate their social media marketing efforts. By learning where your clients live on key social networks you can go there to start the "conversation" and focus your marketing on what they will LOVE to hear, learn, enjoy, and buy.

This makes it pretty easy to see where to spend marketing time and money. If it’s true that 20% of people deliver 80% of your results then you'll want to know them by name.

I’m not certain that this is particularly valuable for the “run of the mill” small practitioner, but for those actually “working the web” or for many of our clients, Flowtown just might prove to be a real asset.

gll

Walking Tours @ Midwest Accounting Show – a Hit, Again!

I’ve arranged and led CPE Walking tours for many different shows over the years. My favorite – and the “grand daddy” of all Walking Tours -- is the Illinois CPA Society sponsored Midwest Accounting Show. I’ve been coordinating and leading the “tours” at this show since back in the ‘90’s and they have become very, very successful. This year we hosted well over 250 participants with tours scheduled on both days of the shows. The participants seemed especially happy with the “mix” of products and services featured this year. I always enjoy coordinating and leading Walking Tours because it means I get to take a hard look at hundreds of vendors’ products. The down side is that I can only feature a few which makes for a lot of disappointed vendors. Luckily, I have developed a very thick skin and taking heat is not a problem for me.

Jennifer Warawa speaks to 90 of my closest friends at the Midwest Accounting Show. The group was very interested in the Sage Accountants Network.

You can learn more here: Sage Accountants’ Network.

We’ll be doing Walking Tours at the Sleeter Group's Accounting Solutions Conference, held the week of November 8, 2010 at Paris Las Vegas, NV. Hope to see you there!!

gll