Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team.
A ghost preparer completes your return for pay but refuses to sign it or enter a PTIN, leaving you legally liable for every inflated deduction on it. Here are the seven red flags, how to verify credentials against the IRS Directory of Federal Tax Return Preparers, and which forms to file if you have already been burned.
A crane rental company is three businesses sharing one yard — equipment, labor, and logistics. This guide covers 5-year MACRS treatment for cranes, the $2.5M Section 179 limit and permanent 100% bonus depreciation, splitting bare from operated rental in the chart of accounts, per-lift job costing including mobilization, and the utilization math behind an idle fleet that can cost $209,000 a year.
Paying a contractor does not transfer intellectual property. Under U.S. law the creator owns the copyright and the inventor owns the patent rights unless a signed writing says otherwise, and "work made for hire" language covers only nine narrow statutory categories that exclude custom software. This guide covers the seven clauses a contractor IP assignment needs, why "hereby assigns" beats "agrees to assign," and what investors check in diligence.
Commercial property pricing fell 7.1% in Q1 2026 and another 8.1% in Q2 while general liability kept rising, so a flat renewal premium can hide thinner coverage. A seven-step playbook for shopping the renewal — updated statements of value, coinsurance math, apples-to-apples quote comparisons — plus how to book premiums by line and location so you can prove the decrease actually showed up.
A certificate of insurance you cannot produce on audit day turns subcontractor payments into your own payroll, billed at your trade rates. Here are the seven things every subcontractor COI must show, the five triggers for demanding a new one, and why certificate holder status is not the same as being an additional insured.
The IRS treats charity gaming as an unrelated business, so raffle and bingo profits can owe UBIT on Form 990-T even when every dollar funds programs. Two exceptions usually save the event — substantially-all-volunteer labor and traditional bingo (never pull-tabs) — while raffles paying $600-plus at 300 times the wager trigger Form W-2G, with 24 percent withholding above $5,000.
Federal law lets an employer require direct deposit but never lets it pick the employee's bank. Most states additionally require voluntary written consent, and Florida and Montana prohibit mandates outright. A three-bucket state breakdown, the five paycard conditions, the authorization-form fields to capture, and the rollout sequence that keeps an electronic-pay switch out of wage-claim territory.
California SB 61 caps retention on private construction contracts signed on or after January 1, 2026 at 5% per progress payment and 5% of the contract price in total, down from the 10% industry norm — here is who it covers, the residential and bonding exceptions, and how to rebuild your retainage receivable schedule so the freed-up cash actually reaches your account.
A working bookkeeping system for freelance and bridal makeup artists — separate business accounts, retainers recorded as liabilities until the wedding day, kit split into consumables versus equipment, mileage logged at the 2026 IRS rates of 72.5 and 76 cents per mile, and a peak-season reserve sized to cover the roughly six quiet months outside the May–October wedding window.
Since July 1, 2026, Airbnb and Vrbo must verify Austin STR license numbers, refuse unlicensed bookings, and remove flagged listings within 10 days of city notice, with fines up to $500 per day. Here are the license costs ($836.30 new, $385.30 renewal, two-year term), the 17% occupancy-tax stack, the quarterly filings platform collection does not cover, and the per-property books that keep it provable.
An assignment for the benefit of creditors (ABC) lets an insolvent business liquidate under state law in months rather than a year, with an assignee the owner chooses instead of a court-appointed trustee — but it carries no automatic stay and no debt discharge. Here is how the five-step process works, how it compares to Chapter 7, and the bookkeeping that keeps a wind-down orderly.
Residential duct cleaning runs roughly $25–$50 per supply vent (about $75 for returns) and dryer vent add-ons average $145, so a one-line invoice hides your margin. This guide itemizes base fees, vent counts and add-ons, costs the four buckets behind each job, capitalizes a $9,000 vacuum rig instead of expensing it as supplies, and tracks the five KPIs — revenue per vent, revenue per tech-hour, upsell attach rate, callback rate, revenue per truck per day — that decide whether the next rig pays for itself.
