All posts by Mariela Reiss

Blumer’s Characteristics are our goals.  They’re what we strive for.  They’re what we want our clients and those we come in contact with to say about our service and our team.   Our characteristics are few, but they pack a lot of punch in each one.  Check out how our team describes these traits.  High autonomy, high accountability High Autonomy and High Accountability are 2 sides of the same coin. We are all adults on the team, and we are treated that way. That’s the High Accountability piece. We are accountable to each other, to do our work in a timely [...]

The IRS issued an announcement on December 23, 2022 that caused a massive sigh of relief from third-party settlement organizations everywhere (as well as from tax preparers and small businesses): A planned increase in reporting requirements for Form 1099-K was delayed from 2022 to 2023. For a little background, the IRS defines a third-party settlement organization (TSPO) as an organization that facilitates payments, usually to merchants, through a third party network. These include auction-payment facilitators (think PayPal) or other merchant services providers (think American Express, Visa or other organizations that process credit card payments to businesses). Prior to the American [...]

The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law on August 16, 2022. In this time of rampant inflation and the drastic moves by the Federal Reserve in hiking interest rates, which is hitting us all painfully in the wallet, something called “The Inflation Reduction Act” sounds fantastic, right?  A law that will help bring down inflation? Bring it on! Except…wait a minute, what is in this law, exactly? And how is this law going to reduce inflation? Good questions. Let me take a few minutes to try and answer them for you as we take a brief tour of The [...]

Protect Your Business (and Your Contractors) with Forms W-9 and W-8 BEN We are fast approaching the end of the year. Which, among other things, means we are fast approaching the time when accountants everywhere start gearing up to prepare client Forms 1099 for the 2022 tax year. So if your accountant starts asking you if you have W-9’s and W-8BEN’s for all of your independent contractors, know that they are thinking ahead to the year-end tasks that keep you, as a business owner, in compliance. Compliance isn’t the most thrilling concept. And remembering to collect all of those Forms [...]

If you’ve been a Blumer client for any length of time, you know we are all about processes: consistent, regular, documented workflows that make client work flow smoother and allow us to hit a high level of quality in our financial support of our clients, day in and day out. What might not be so obvious is that we are also all about making steady, continual improvements in our processes. When we hear client comments or see trends that make us rethink what and how we do things, we get together as a team to analyze the issue, come up […]

How to Deal (as a Business Owner) with Inflation, Recession, and Other Tough Times, Part 2 A recent article in the New York Times just last month had this headline: “Is Recession Staring Us Down? Already Upon Us? Here’s Why It’s Hard to Say.” Say what? There is no denying we are in for some interesting economic times ahead. I’m sure this is weighing heavy on the minds of most business owners right now. But, as I mentioned in last month’s blog post, there are certain fundamentals that will always be true when a business faces a crisis. We covered [...]

How to Deal (as a Business Owner) with Inflation, Recession, and Other Tough Times, Part 1 Recession. Inflation. Stagflation. Economic downturn. Global slowdown.  We’ve all read the headlines. We’ve all scratched our collective heads at the ever-changing predictions on an economic downturn.  It’s something every business owner has on their minds right now: Are we going into a recession? Are we already *in* a recession? How do we deal with inflation? And what do we do if things get worse? The questions (and the worries) can be endless. So what are the answers? Are there any answers?  I can’t tell [...]

Our Discovery Process (aka The Financial Wellness Checkup That You Didn't Know Your Business Needed)  Have you ever wondered if your business was humming along at optimal condition? Or whether the financial health of your business was more like that of a star athlete…or the average Joe? Well, there is a way to tell what level the financial health of your business is at. It involves a deep-dive into your systems by an objective outsider with the expertise and skill to examine your business quickly and thoroughly, and then give you a detailed report that guides you through the changes [...]

  As the tax services manager here at Blumer, I wanted to share with you a little information about our firm’s internal process for creating your tax return.  Rest assured, there is a lot happening behind the scenes to ensure that your tax return is prepared carefully and completely. So let me pull back the curtain a little so you can see what is going on behind the scenes.   The process kicks off when you fill in the questionnaire (also known as the Client Needs List) and upload any tax documents we don’t have to your Client Portal.  If we [...]