Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team.
Business Overhead Expense (BOE) disability insurance reimburses a business for fixed costs — rent, staff payroll, utilities, leases — when the owner can't work due to illness or injury. It excludes the owner's own salary, pays 12 to 24 months after a 30-, 60-, or 90-day elimination period, and typically costs 1% to 3% of the monthly benefit per year. Premiums are deductible; benefits are taxable to the business.
Seventeen states run back-to-school sales tax holidays in summer 2026, from Florida's 32-day window to Iowa's Friday-Saturday weekend, each with its own price caps — $75 clothing in Ohio, $300 in Connecticut, $40 on Maryland backpacks. Participation is mandatory for most registered retailers, and destination sourcing means online sellers with nexus must honor the holiday of the delivery state.
An Amazon FBA reserve is money Amazon owes you, not a fee — book the withheld settlement as a current asset (Amazon Reserved Balances), not a P&L expense, so revenue is not understated and bank reconciliation ties.
AI meeting notetakers can trigger all-party consent rules in roughly a dozen states and create voiceprints regulated by Illinois BIPA, which carries $1,000 per negligent and $5,000 per intentional violation with no proof of harm required. This guide maps the consent rules, the three things BIPA requires before a voiceprint exists, and a six-step settings, consent, and retention playbook for teams under 50 people.
The enhanced ACA subsidies expired December 31, 2025, so in 2026 a single filer one dollar above roughly $63,840 in MAGI loses the entire premium tax credit while Marketplace rates rise a median 18%. Deductible SEP IRA, solo 401(k), traditional IRA and HSA contributions are above-the-line, so they lower the MAGI the credit uses — and the repayment cap on excess advance credits is gone for tax years after 2025, making every dollar of the excess repayable.
A workers' comp premium is payroll ÷ 100 × class rate × experience mod, so the year-end audit re-tests both variables against your actual records. This guide covers the three audit types and what triggers each, the documents auditors request, why overtime premium is only excludable when recorded separately by employee and week under NCCI Rule 2-B-2, the 2026 NCCI officer caps of $3,400 weekly maximum and $1,700 minimum, and why payments to a subcontractor without a current certificate of insurance get charged to you as payroll.
Zelle is not a third-party settlement organization under Section 6050W, so it files no 1099-K at any amount — while Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Stripe, and Square do once the federal threshold of more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions is met, restored retroactively by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Income is taxable either way, and this guide shows the reconciliation system that keeps multi-rail freelance books accurate.
A throwback rule can push a home-state sales factor from 20% to 60% on the same revenue by adding untaxed 'nowhere' sales back to the numerator; throwout, which shrinks the denominator instead, takes it to 33%. About 20 states plus D.C. still throw back tangible sales, five repealed their rules since 2019, and P.L. 86-272 protects none of your SaaS receipts.
Effective July 1, 2026, Virginia's SB 637 drops the Virginia Human Rights Act employer threshold from 15 employees to 5 and extends the filing window from 300 days to two years. Any business with five or more employees for each working day in 20 or more calendar weeks is now covered for every prohibited practice — not just discharge. Here is the 20-week counting rule, a seven-step compliance checklist, and the payroll and retention records an investigator asks for first.
Vermont Saves reached employers with five or more workers on July 1, 2026, and New York Secure Choice finished its three-wave rollout on July 15, 2026. What each program requires, the penalties ($20 rising to $75 per employee in Vermont, $250 per employee per year in New York), and how to book the withholding as a payroll liability rather than an expense.
34% of U.S. small business owners have no retirement plan, and more than 80% of a typical owner's net worth sits inside the business. This guide compares the SEP IRA, Solo 401(k), and SIMPLE IRA at 2026 limits ($72,000, $24,500 deferral, $17,000), explains the SECURE 2.0 credits worth up to $5,000 a year for three years, and gives a five-step plan to start saving this quarter.
The median small business holds just 27 days of cash buffer, and a quarter hold fewer than 13. This guide shows how to size a reserve at three to six months of essential fixed costs, where to hold it, how to fund it in four stages, and how to book it as an asset account so transfers never distort profit.
