Corrections or additions?
These articles by Peter J. Mladineo and Barbara Fox were published
in U.S. 1 Newspaper on April 15, 1998. All rights reserved.
Tax Time
If you are reading this article on April 15 and haven’t
yet filed your Federal income tax, don’t fret — there’s still
plenty of time. No forms? No problem: forms can be acquired via TaxFax,
703-368-9694, or from the IRS website, https://www.IRS.ustreas.gov.
(You can file from the website, but you must have special filing software
already installed in your computer.)
No time today? You can do it tonight. The Carnegie Center post office
is open until midnight this Wednesday, April 15, and several other
post offices in the state have IRS representatives on hand to assist
confused taxpayers.
For most people, however, the biggest worry now is not about getting
the forms filed on time, but rather what happens once they arrive
at the infamous Internal Revenue Service processing facility in Holtsville,
New York. This 500,000 square feet facility, with 4,900 employees
at tax time, processes all of the New Jersey’s tax forms. It’s also
where a selected few returns will be plucked out for a dreaded audit.
Priscila Amor, an IRS revenue agent, tells the Institute of
Management Accountants how to prepare for an IRS audit on Thursday,
April 16, at 6 p.m. at McAteer’s in Somerset. Call 609-840-0700 for
more information.
Bottom line — if you’re audited, don’t ignore it, Amor says. It
won’t go away. After receiving the letter, call the revenue agent
to confirm or reschedule the appointment. Amor recommends asking the
examiner what issues are going to be covered at the audit and what
is the basis of that selection. “It helps to know what triggered
the examiner to make that determination and to know if the taxpayer
has correct support documentation to support that examination,”
she says.
Then get a list of items to bring to the audit, and bring as many
of those items as possible. The more prepared the taxpayer comes,
the quicker and more painless the interview will be. If a business
is being audited, the revenue agent will make a visit to the business.
The next step is a general interview, where the examiner tries to
get “an idea of what is surrounding the financial world of this
taxpayer,” says Amor. Then examiner then asks more specific questions
and requests to see the specified documents. Sometimes a determination
will be made on the spot.
The taxpayer should never procrastinate giving information or documents
to the examiner. “Credibility is very important and it is established
throughout the audit,” says Amor. “If you give a prompt answer
throughout the examination it establishes credibility.” If you
are having trouble getting the requested information, call the auditor.
And remember, written testimony carries more weight than oral testimony.
“Nothing is better than a written document that is generated the
year that is being examined by an unrelated party,” says Amor.
“Of course it has to be a real document. We’ve encountered fraudulent
documents and that carries criminal penalties.” Also it’s up to
the taxpayer to realize when to seek professional advice.
Once a determination is made, the taxpayer has a right to agree or
disagree. If there is a disagreement, the case is sent to appeals,
and if it still unresolved, it ends up in tax court. Just a reminder
— the taxpayer no longer assumes the burden of guilt in tax court.
Also, taxpayers shouldn’t sign a determination if it is not understood
completely. The IRS is not automatically right.
Meanwhile, one group in particular is taking aim against the IRS.
The National Federation of Independent Business is gathering signatures
for a campaign to abolish the tax code. The NFIB is calling on Bill
Clinton on Congress to “sunset the current tax code by December
31, 2000″ in favor of a “simpler, fairer tax code that rewards
work and savings,” says a press release.
So far, NFIB New Jersey has signed on 136 volunteers to canvass the
state with petitions. For more information about the NFIB or about
this effort, call 888-668-4477, or visit the website, https://www.not4irs.org.
The New Jersey chapter is based at 156 West State Street in Trenton.
Top Of PageOn Buying a Business
For some, buying an existing business may be a better
route to entrepreneurship than starting a business anew, says Ronald
Cook. Existing businesses already have track records and customers.
They already have ongoing relationships and operations. Start-ups
don’t. What start-ups typically have is risk, Cook reports. “This
ties into the overall failure rates of business in the economy and
the riskiest period of time is within the first two years of a business’s
life,” he says.
Cook, a management professor at Rider University, is part of a panel
that discusses buying a business at Rider University on Thursday,
April 16, 6:30 p.m. at Sweigart Hall auditorium. Call 609-896-5522.
The other panelists are Rachel Stark, an attorney with Stark
& Stark, and Howard Scribner, a partner at Arthur Andersen.
While bargains abound, many come with well-hidden problems. “The
business might be in trouble,” says Cook. “Anybody buying
a business better be doing their due diligence. Why is this business
being sold? I make an analogy to buying a used car.”
The need for due diligence can actually work against buying a smaller
business because of the cost of doing due diligence, Cook reports.
Proportionally speaking, there’s not that much difference in investigating
a smaller company or a much larger company. For example, a company
priced at $75,000 might cost $25,000 to investigate, while due diligence
for a company worth $750,000 might only cost $40,000.
Another possible sticking point is that an entrepreneur buying a business
doesn’t get the initiative to build the business from scratch. “You
can’t necessarily customize exactly the way you want it,” says
Cook. “There may be some undesirable assets and you may not be
able to move the location.”
A healthy economy might seem conducive to buying and selling businesses,
but Cook reports that differences in perception between buyer and
seller could actually create obstacles to coming up with an agreeable
sale price. The buyers, he reports, have the mind set that “buying
this business is riskier than the stock market so I want to get a
better rate of return than I would get on the stock market.” Meanwhile,
sellers assume that good economic conditions should yield a higher
price for the business.
Also business owners often add the company’s intangible assets to
its sale price. This could heighten the perception that the price
is inflated. “They’re going to estimate what potential future
earnings are going to be, then you’re paying something for the reputation
that the business has, and the value they attach to that may be more
than you’d be paying if you were starting your own business.”
Finally, if the business is changing owners there is likely to be
turnover of employees. Unfortunately, this usually doesn’t work in
the new owner’s favor. “The rule of thumb is the most valuable
ones are the most mobile,” says Cook. “You potentially could
be left with the less-than-stellar employees and having all the good
ones leave. You keep the good ones and cull off the bad ones but more
importantly you have to decide which ones are which.”
Cook, 39, has taught at Rider for five years. Prior to that he was
involved in two business ventures in central New York. One was a mobile
DJ company, that he sold in 1990, and the second was a family-owned
snowmobile business, which is still alive, he reports.
Top Of PageThe Art of Remembering
You’re in the middle of a conversation with somebody
important, you open your mouth to address them personally, but you
can’t seem to recall their name. Technically speaking, you haven’t
forgotten their name, says Michael Epstein, psychology department
chair at Rider University. You never went through the trouble to remember
it in the first place.
Memory, he explains, is an innate capacity that is different for everyone.
The act of not remembering something is not evidence of a “short
memory,” he explains, but a failure to perform the act of remembering.
“I often say just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean you
have forgotten,” he says. “You can very often have a failure
to access information that is theoretically available.”
Epstein lectures about mnemonics at Rider on Wednesday, April 22,
at noon at the Student Center. Call 609-896-5033. “Mnemonics are
all about putting things away in a way that is organized or having
retrieval cues that help you to get the information that you have
stored,” he says.
Making associations is the easiest way to offset a temporary bout
with amnesia. “It turns out that you do have a certain capacity
limit in your immediate memory,” says Epstein. “You’re conscious
of about five to nine chunks of information. If you use associations
it increases the size of the chunks.” Here are some ways to make
associations:
Create acronyms. To remember the five Great Lakes, use”HOMES” — Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.Use rhymes. To remember the number of watts in a horsepower(746), Epstein uses this couplet: “Columbus sailed the ocean bluein 14 hundred and 92/ Divide the son of a bitch in two.”Use imagery. Epstein’s suggestion for getting his namecorrect (it’s pronounced ep-stine, although most say ep-steen): “Youdon’t drink beer out of a `steen,’ you drink it out of a stein,”he says. “My ears protrude out from my head. If you pictured myears as a beer stein, turned upside down, you suddenly see an `up-stein.'”If you needed to remember a horse and apple, he instructs, don’t picturethe horse and then the apple, picture the horse eating the apple.Or, better yet, picture the apple eating the horse. “Make yourimage very elaborate,” he says. “Bizarre and obscene imagesare more fun.”Want to remember the capital of Kentucky? “Think of Ken-turkey,”says Epstein, “and then think of turkey frankfurter.” (Thecapital is Frankfort, not Louisville.) The capital of Oregon? Usethe rhyming method: Where is the ore all gone? They put it on sale.(It’s Salem.)Epstein, 54, probably wouldn’t have needed any tricks to rememberthat one — Oregon is his home state. He got his undergraduateand graduate degrees from the University of Washington. (“Thecapital is Olympia — you can imagine washing your hair with Olympiabeer,” he says.) He got both a BA and a BS (Class of 1966), andthen got his Ph.D in psychology in 1970. After teaching for a fewyears at the University of Washington, he came to Rider in 1971 andbecame chair of the department in 1987.Perhaps the most overlooked key to developing good recall is to trustyour memory. “The single best thing you can do for recall is payattention,” Epstein says. “You can’t forget what you nevergot.”– Peter J. MladineoTop Of PageMaking Good MeetingsFor speechmakers, the way a speech is presented, andthe environment in which the speech is presented, is as importantas the content. So believes Karen Lawson, a training consultantwho frequently gives presentations and has written numerous booksabout the art. “You have to give people a reason for being there,”she says. “They just don’t want to listen to ideas and concepts,they want real world stuff that they can take away and use in theirlives or on the job. Although there has to be a lot of meat and contentI think there has to be a real entertainment factor. People have toenjoy the process.”Lawson tells the Association for Women in Science how to create popularmeetings on Wednesday, April 22, at 5:45 p.m. at American Cyanamid.Call 609-716-2829.Her 12-year-old company, Lawson Consulting Group, is based in Lansdale,Pennsylvania. Lawson, 50, has degrees from Mount Union College andthe University of Akron, and a Ph.D in adult and organizational developmentfrom Temple University. She has published four books and has a newtitle, “Involving Your Audience, Making it Active,” due outshortly from Allyn & Bacon. She spends a lot of time training corporationson how to facilitate team meetings.Her advice for organizing meetings: “Tap into what people arereally interested in,” she says. “I don’t think a lot of peoplereally sit down and assess their audience and membership and findout what people want.” Lawson urges speakers to get the audienceinvolved throughout the entire presentation, which is not an easytask. “People are very poor listeners in the first place and wehave very short attention spans,” she says. “People have beenworking all day. I get them involved right from the beginning withsome kind of an activity, whether it’s interacting or networking.I personally like a lot of roundtable kinds of arrangements becauseit facilitates interaction.”She also brings people up on stage and tells a lot of anecdotes, oftenabout people in the audience. “People like speakers who tell storiesto illustrate their points,” she says. “If you can refer tosome of the audience members, people like that too because they canidentify with one of their own.”The trick to this is by attending the pre-meeting reception. “It’sreally important that you get in there and meet and greet them sothey know you as a person before you get up in front of them,”says Lawson.For organization leaders and top-notch management, being there shouldbe a priority. “I’ve been to meetings where the head honchos neverreally interacted with the members,” she says. “My opinionis that sends out the wrong message. When people come to a meetingin our association I look it as those people are a guest of my home.”Other tips from Lawson:Don’t overuse visual aids. Speakers who are slaves totheir clickers often appear like talking heads giving canned presentations,she warns. “Your visual aids don’t have to be limited to transparenciesor slides.” She suggests using costumes and other props. “WhenI talk about motivating employees I come in a with a whip, a carroton a stick, and a flowering plant, and I use those to illustrate thedifferent approaches to motivation.”Lawson also recommends decorating the room with posters or quotationsthat relate to the topic. Or music. And don’t forget to offer give-aways.(The emphasis here is on give, not away.) “It has to be somethingthat people are not going to throw away,” she says.– Peter J. MladineoTop Of PageE-PredictionsLast year when Eric Berg came to town he toutednetwork computers and the impending merger between computers and theInternet (U.S. 1, April 2, 1997). This year, Berg, the director oftechnology analysis at Price Waterhouse’s World Technology Centerin Menlo Park, California, is talking about electronic commerce. Hecomes back to the New Jersey Technology Council to discuss this Tuesday,April 21, at 4:30 p.m. at the Marriott. Call 609-452-1010.Berg’s first call: “Business-to-business electronic commerce isreally quantitatively a lot bigger, as much as 20 times bigger thanbusiness-to-consumer,” he says. “It’s a way of reengineeringthe procurement process.” On the business-to-consumer side, manyof the electronic security hazards have been cleared because mostbrowsers use secure socket layers. This means that online transactionsshould increase, which could require many businesses not online yetto establish Web presences.He also sees a trend where the information technology industry willbecome increasingly interested in giving the communications industry”a kick in the pants” to deploy higher bandwidth solutionslike cable modems and digital subscriber lines. “The computerindustry sees that as essential to expansion of the Web and one ofthe key drivers of the ongoing success of the computing industry,”he says.The telecom industry is now being shaped by packet switching, thedigital alternative to circuit switching. “It provides more effectiveuse of shared resources,” says Berg.In a circuit switching environment, he explains, if you are silentit still uses space on the line. “In a packet switching environmentif you’re not saying anything then your call is not generating anytraffic on the network,” he says. “We think that in the telecomworld there are already a number of new carriers using this as opposedto circuit switching.” This shift will occur gradually, over thenext 10 years, Berg predicts.Top Of PageGrants GuideAnyone taking Nancy Kieling’s “Community Works”workshop on Thursday, April 16, will want a copy of the New JerseyGrants Guide. The workshop is part of a volunteer development “CommunityWorks” program, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Princeton, onThursday, April 16, from 5:15 to 9:15 p.m., at Princeton University’sWoodrow Wilson School. For late registration call Marge Smith at609-924-8652.You’ve heard of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the BonnerFoundation, and maybe even the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation,but did you know that Princeton is also the home of the WilliamA. & Joan L. Schreyer Foundation (for the former CEO of MerrillLynch), the Mary Owen Borden Memorial Foundation, and the Haroldand Adeline Kramer Family Foundation?The Center for NonProfit Corporations is marketing New Jersey’s editionof this fascinating, fat book with information on foundations, corporategiving programs, state funding programs, religious funders — anda complete nuts and bolts guide on grant seeking.”This was a quality project and we wanted to be involved withit,” says Linda Czipo, vice president of the Center forNon-Profit Corporations, which has just expanded from 13 Roszel Roadto 1501 Livingston Avenue, North Brunswick 08902; 732-227-0800; fax,732-227-0087. The center is a 600-member nonprofit umbrella providingadvocacy, membership services, technical assistance, research, publicinformation, and cost-saving benefits to nonprofits in New Jersey.Information for the grant guide was obtained from the foundations’annual income reporting return filed with the Internal Revenue Service.All the foundations were sent this information and asked to confirmit, she says. The availability of the book is supposed to boost thequality of proposals sent to the foundations and save time for everyoneconcerned.Written by Richard I. Male, who started doing these guides inhis home state of Colorado, the guide tells that New Jersey charitiesreceived nearly $70 million from 25 foundations, only some of whichwere based in New Jersey. Even more surprising is that these top 25foundations devoted 20 percent of all their grants to New Jersey causes.If you work for a nonprofit organization, you need details. You needto know that if your cause is aging related, don’t go to the Schreyers.Their fund supports educational and human service organizations anddoes not accept unsolicited proposals. Sample grants were $402,000to various Penn State causes and $2,000 to the Institute of AdvancedStudy.Indexes include “fields of interest” section and check for”aging/senior citizens” and you will find a slew of possibilities,including the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sovereign Bank. A “typeof support” index will show that Summit Bancorporation has moneyto encourage employee volunteers, but Johnson & Johnson CorporateGiving Program will pay for equipment purchases. Check the countyindex for where foundations are located, or where grants are made.Finally check the list of grantmakers who did not respond to informationrequests. You will find that the Harbourton Foundation at 33 WitherspoonStreet, for example, gave away $284,200 in 1994 but provided no additionalinformation to this book.The book comes with a grants guide deadline calendar plus a quarterlynewsletter. The guide is $149 ($120 for members of the Center) plus$6.95 handling, and the calendar is free. The newsletter is $29 ifordered with the guide. Call 888-247-2689, https://www.grantseeker.com.– Barbara FoxTop Of PageHot FlashesMention the M word, for Menopause, and you get two reactions,says Joan C. Rose, either enthusiasm or denial. “Menopauseis a political issue, an economic issue, a lifestyles issue, a healthissue, and a psychological issue,” says Rose.She and her firm, the Newtown-based Rose Group, are staging “Menopause:Challenges & Choices: a breakthrough conference offering solutionsin the workplace” on Saturday, April 25, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.,at the JFK Conference Center in Edison. Gloria Steinem isthe keynoter. For $125 registration or information call 215-968-6328or 732-632-1570.It’s not just for women of a certain age, says Rose, noting that 44million women will enter menopause by the year 2000, and 60 percentof them are in the workforce. The conference is for decision makerswho want to maximize the potential of their employees, for healthprofessionals and educators, as well as for any woman who needs accurate,up-to-date information.Helene B. Leonetti, an gynecologist and obstetrician with aholistic approach, opens the day by outlining a positive and integrativeapproach to menopause. Attendees can choose two workshops from anarray that includes such workplace-based sessions as creating work/lifebalance by Karol Rose, a principal of Coopers & Lybrand, andcoping strategies and potential legal implications for menopause inthe workplace by consultant Barbara Adolf and attorney DavidE. Beckett of Szaferman, Lakind, Blumstein, Water & Blader.Also available are sessions on the pharmacological aspects of dealingwith menopause (taking progesterone, preventing and treating osteoporosis,or using plant nutrients — phytoestrogens — as an alternative),with Leonetti, rheumatologist Bessie M. Sullivan, and ToriHudson, founder of a Woman’s Time. Authors Judith Sachs andVivian Greenberg talk about sexuality and caregiving, respectively,and gynecologist Jeffery I. Scharf offers the male perspective.In some cultures, post-menopausal women are revered for their wisdomand experience. Even in the United States, Rose says some find theyacquire what anthropologist Margaret Mead terms “menopausal zest.”For others, the apparent loss of sexuality and the real loss of theirability to choose to bear children causes them to go through a grievingprocess.An alumna of the University of Miami, Class of ’67, she started outin social work but moved to marketing. She has a master’s degree incounseling psychology from Loyola and did career management for aninternational outplacement firm. With her firm she specializes in”issues of change.””We need to ask questions of ourselves and our doctors,” saysRose, “to find the solutions that are best for us, and to makethis a topic we can discuss at work so we can all go through thisprocess and know we are making the best decisions for ourselves.”Rose relates how she worked with a client to help her present a morerealistic and useful way to deal with menopause in the workplace.The woman was in the middle of a presentation to a small group whenshe got terrible hot flashes and started to perspire. She didn’t sayanything about it, but she took off her jacket and then her vest andkept on going. Afterwards, someone came to her and asked if she werehaving a heart attack.”How could that have been handled differently? In a small group,she could have made a joke about it. If someone were aware of it,she could have said `Let’s open a window” or `Let’s take a fiveminute break.’ But it wasn’t out in the open. There was an embarrassment,an awkwardness on both parts, and no one knew what to say.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
