#accounting
Master accounting fundamentals and best practices for plain-text bookkeeping
Post-NAR settlement, real estate brokers must track buyer-agent commissions across buyer agreements, seller offers, and purchase contracts. This guide covers documentation requirements, trust-account reconciliation, and the specific ledger entries that keep your 1099s honest and your licensing board satisfied.
By default an LLC is disregarded to Schedule C and pays SE tax on all profit — elect S-corp via 8832/2553, pay yourself reasonable W-2 wages, and distributions escape SE tax when the salary is defensible.
The IRS needs adequate records per position — ordinary items 6 years from filing, payroll 4, property until disposition plus 6 — and a digital image counts only when indexed, legible, and retrievable.
An employee is a registration before the first paycheck — EIN, state withholding and SUI, workers' comp bound, W-4 and I-9 in 3 days, new-hire report in 20 days, 941 deposits by EFTPS.
Qualified research wages, supplies, and 65% of contract research generate a 14% ASC — and qualified startups can elect up to $500K per year against employer payroll on Form 8974.
NEC is for services, MISC is for rent and royalties — both to recipients by Jan 31, but NEC also files to IRS by Jan 31. Miss it and the $60–$310 per-form ladder starts.
Pet cremation businesses run three revenue models at once (tiered cremation service, veterinary referral commissions, and merchandise sales), and the retort itself depreciates as 7-year MACRS equipment eligible for 100% bonus depreciation on property placed in service after January 19, 2025 — not as a 39-year building improvement.
The March 2025 interim final rule exempted domestic reporting companies — foreign-registered entities must still report within 30 days, update within 30 of any change, at $591 per day for willful failure.
Staking, airdrops, and hard forks are ordinary income at fair value when you gain dominion and control — and every crypto-to-crypto swap is a sale with proceeds, basis, and gain.
Restaurant meals are back to 50% after the 2022 100% boost expired — the real test is whether each meal has amount, time, place, purpose, and business relationship plus your presence.
Meta Platforms' Q2 2026 revenue grew 28% to $60.8 billion but net income fell 14% to $15.8 billion — the first year-over-year profit decline of its AI-capex era — as total costs rose 55%, operating margin dropped from 43% to 31%, and capital expenditures nearly doubled to $31.1 billion.
Robinhood's Q2 2026 revenue rose 32% to a record $1.31 billion and net income jumped 48% to $573 million, but the quarter's defining events were its first-ever debt raise — $2.2 billion of convertible notes — and a one-time $135 million gain that supplied roughly $0.14 of the $0.62 diluted EPS.
