expense

Run a business for any length of time and the importance of cash flow becomes abundantly clear. When payroll is due, bills are piling up and funds aren’t available, blood pressure tends to rise. For this reason, being able to accurately forecast cash flow is critical. Here are four ways to refine your approach:

1. Know when you peak. Many businesses are cyclical, and their cash flow needs vary by month or season. Trouble can arise when an annual budget doesn’t reflect, for example, three months of peak production in the summer to fill holiday orders followed by a return to normal production in the fall.

For seasonal operations — such as homebuilders, farms, landscaping companies and recreational facilities — using a one-size-fits-all approach can throw budgets off, sometimes dramatically. To forecast your company’s cash flow needs and plan accordingly, track your peak sales and production times over as long a period as possible.

2. Engage in careful accounting. Effective cash flow management requires anticipating and capturing every expense and incoming payment, as well as — to the extent possible — the exact timing of each payable and receivable. But pinpointing exact costs and expenditures for every day of the week can be challenging.

Businesses can face an array of additional costs, overruns and payment delays. Although inventorying every possible expense can be tedious and time-consuming, doing so can help avoid problems down the road.

3. Keep an eye on additional funding sources. As your business expands or contracts, a dedicated line of credit with a bank can help you meet cash flow needs, including any periodic shortages. Interest rates on these credit lines, however, can be high compared to other types of loans. So, lines of credit typically are used to cover only short-term operational costs, such as payroll and supplies. They also may require significant collateral and personal guarantees from the company’s owners.

Of course, a line of credit isn’t your only outside funding option. Federally funded small business loans have been widely offered during the COVID-19 pandemic and may still be available to you. Look into these and other options suitable to the size and needs of your company.

4. Invoice diligently, run leaner. For many businesses, the biggest cash flow obstacle is slow collections. Be sure you’re invoicing in a timely manner and offering easy, convenient ways for customers to pay (such as online). For new customers, perform a thorough credit check to avoid delayed payments and bad debts.

Another common obstacle is poor resource management. Redundant machinery, misguided investments and oversized offices are just a few examples of poorly managed expenses and overhead that can negatively affect cash flow. For help reducing expenses and more effectively forecasting cash flow, please contact us.

As you likely know by now, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced or eliminated many deductions for individuals. One itemized deduction the TCJA kept intact is for investment interest expense. This is interest on debt used to buy assets held for investment, such as margin debt used to buy securities. But if you have investment interest expense, you can’t count on benefiting from the deduction.

3 hurdles

There are a few hurdles you must pass to benefit from the investment interest deduction even if you have investment interest expense:

You must itemize deductions. In the past this might not have been a hurdle, because you may have typically had enough itemized deductions to easily exceed the standard deduction. But the TCJA nearly doubled the standard deduction, to $24,000 (married couples filing jointly), $18,000 (heads of households) and $12,000 (singles and married couples filing separately) for 2018. Plus, some of your other itemized deductions, such as your state and local tax deduction, might be smaller on your 2018 return because of TCJA changes. So you might not have enough itemized deductions to exceed your standard deduction and benefit from itemizing.
You can’t have incurred the interest to produce tax-exempt income. For example, if you borrow money to invest in municipal bonds, which are exempt from federal income tax, you can’t deduct the interest.
You must have sufficient “net investment income.” The investment interest deduction is limited to your net investment income. For the purposes of this deduction, net investment income generally includes taxable interest, nonqualified dividends and net short-term capital gains, reduced by other investment expenses. In other words, long-term capital gains and qualified dividends aren’t included. However, any disallowed interest is carried forward. You can then deduct the disallowed interest in a later year if you have excess net investment income.

You may elect to treat net long-term capital gains or qualified dividends as investment income in order to deduct more of your investment interest. But if you do, that portion of the long-term capital gain or dividend will be taxed at ordinary-income rates.

Will interest expense save you tax?

As you can see, the answer to the question depends on multiple factors. We can review your situation and help you determine whether you can benefit from the investment interest expense deduction on your 2018 tax return. Call us today at 205-345-9898.

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4 ways to refine your cash flow forecasting

Investment interest expense is still deductible, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll benefit