5 Tax-Wise Ways to Cash in on Recovery

Although the much-talked about economic recovery is still largely invisible to most small business owners, now is a good time to position yourself to take advantage of special tax benefits as activity starts to improve. “Although tax rates may trend upward in the next few years, most businesses can offset a big portion of those increases with proper planning now,” says Steve Henley, national tax practice leader at the accounting firm CBIZ MHM, LLC.  Here are some things to do:

Secrets of Online Success for Local Business

Dear Dan: Okay, I admit we’ve taken our eye off the Internet ball a bit, and maybe we’re falling behind in the race to win more business online, and with social media. Is it really that important? How are others doing it?  — Social Slacker

Dear Slacker: Internet users conduct billions of online searches monthly. And since one in every five searches is spurred by a local need of some kind, the implications for local businesses are huge. It comes down to this:  If you aren’t leveraging online business-building strategies to their fullest, you’re putting yourself in a competitive ditch.


The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently stepped up its efforts to inform business owners about all the ways they can build business online – from Internet yellow pages (IYP) and mobile marketing to social media and online video.

Where to Get a Small-Business Loan

If you want to expand your business, you're going to need some cash.
Money still isn't falling off trees for small businesses, and the lending seas can be a challenge to navigate. Although you need funding, you want to make sure your deal is better than the one offered by the neighborhood loan shark.Money might be available thanks to stimulus spending, but that doesn't mean it's easy to get.

"The [banks] have tightened their lending policies, and it is more difficult for an entrepreneur to get financing,'' says Velda Eugenias, a certified financial planner with Eugenias Advisory Group in Gadsden, Ala. "It is causing the small-business owner to have to get creative with finding sources of capital.''

Google earnings soar 38%

Google posted quarterly sales and profit that trumped Wall Street expectations Thursday, boosted by a rebounding advertising market.The search giant's net income was $1.96 billion, or $6.06 per share, in the first quarter, up 38% from $1.42 billion from the same period last year

Excluding one-time charges, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company earned $2.18 billion in the first quarter, or $6.76 per share, up from $1.64 billion a year earlier. That easily beat analysts expectations, which called for earnings of $6.60 per share.

Apple's Chinese iPhone sales explode

Unit sales increase 9 fold from last year. Total revenue from greater China: $1.3 billion

Analysts scratching their heads about how they could have so badly underestimated Apple's (AAPL) iPhones sales — and as a result, its revenue and earnings — in the quarter that ended March 27 need look no further than the Chinese market for iPhones.

The 8.752 million iPhones Apple sold in Q2 2010 beat Wall Street's estimates by 25% to 30% — or nearly 2 million phones.

Where did those sales come from? A big chunk of them, it seems, came from China. Listen to this exchange between Barclay's Ben Reitzes and Apple COO Tim Cook during Tuesday's earnings call with analysts:

New Google tool spotlights requests for user data

In what it calls a stand against online censorship, Google has created a tool that will let users know how often governments around the world ask the company to pass on user data or delete content from its search results and other services.
The search giant's new Government Requests tool also publicly tracks how many of the requests Google has honored.

So which government tops the chart? So far that's Brazil, which asked Google for user information 3,663 times and sent 291 content removal requests in the last six months of 2009. Google says it honored 83% of Brazil's removal requests.
The company's removal compliance rate varies widely. For example, it honored 94% of the 188 requests it got from Germany's government agencies but only 44% of the 16 requests Canada sent over.
The United States is hot on Brazil's tail, sending Google 3,580 requests for user data and 123 removal requests. More than half of those targeted content on Google's YouTube video site. Google says it complied with 81% of the U.S. requests.

Coca-Cola

Top 50 rank: 10
Rank in Beverages: 1
(Previous rank: 3)
Overall score: 6.98

Why it's admired

While sales lagged in the U.S. last year, the food and beverage maker saw growth in emerging markets like China and India, as well as Europe, where favorable exchange rates have helped bring fizzier revenues. Coke has been a leader when it comes to environmental issues: It is aiming to be water neutral -- meaning every drop of water used by the company will be replenished -- by 2020, and CEO Muhtar Kent participated in climate change talks in Copenhagen in