The internet has steadily moved into so many pieces of our lives over the past couple decades that it can be difficult to really appreciate because of its ubiquity. But it is so prevalent that a recent report says going without the internet for the day would come at a worldwide cost of $43 billion.
First, I have to admit that I don’t really buy this number. I am sure it was arrived at in a reasonable manner – something along the lines of adding up purchases made online with hours of work done that also required internet access – but seeing as it was done by a VPN company, it also had interest in this number being as big as it could be. And yes, losing the internet would be a huge disruptor, but if we are talking about losses in a day, well, once Amazon comes back up tomorrow, you can still make your purchases. And some of that work that you couldn’t completely log in and record for the day, well some things still could get done, and you can save them to the servers when the internet comes back up. But after pushing through the slight disbelief, I started to think about just how much of a change this really highlights for it is undeniable how many aspects of our lives have been changed by it. No matter how stubborn a business is about adapting new technologies, if you did not jump on this one, chances are you perished (Blockbuster, Kodak) or are still hanging on by flimsy strings – before I started doing my current job, I worked for a newspaper, remember those? And the smaller a business is, the easier it can be to find an individual niche and work from it even if ignoring larger trends, but that was not an option for those giant companies. Once they didn’t make the shift, they were left behind. So this is a bit of a warning about trying to hold out against all advances. This does not mean everyone should be an early adopter, for there are plenty of new hot things that are dropped into the nostalgia bin just as quickly as they popped up. But everyone needs to have a tipping point where they acknowledge a change will be long-lasting. There are certain things that are going to be worth being stubborn on when it comes to the character of your business, but one also cannot be stubborn enough to endanger their business’s overall existence. Warmly, Josh Bousquet Connect to Us ~ Facebook ~ Twitter
0 Comments
About a month ago, I wrote about the wide reach of scams and how there are unsavory characters pressuring people into art donation schemes that benefit their tax returns. So often we think of scam victims as those without the knowledge and/or know-how to combat someone who confronts them with either a desperate situation or a quick grab for cash. The wealthy somehow seem above this in our minds. But now that we can add last week’s guilty verdict in the Sam Bankman-Fried case, we need to keep adjusting the view on who could be a victim, for it really is everyone.
After all, Bankman-Fried’s fraud crimes covered somewhere in the range of $10 billion, so we aren’t talking anything near a pittance here. But with former scandals like the work of Bernie Madoff and the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, we have seen how things can grow and cover more than one poor victim. But maybe there is some logic in there. If we think of a scam that affects one person, we can envision how that person feels. And even if they only end up losing somewhere in the range of $500, it is easy to think of the bills that could have been paid with that money and how the victim may have to scramble to cover it. That number is small in the grand scheme, but also small enough that we can appreciate it. It is must more difficult to appreciate just what $10 billion is. Beyond that, Bankman-Fried worked in the cryptocurrency world, which holds some mystery of its own. I mean, I have no problem admitting that my understanding of the crypto world is rather amateur, but Bankman-Fried’s looks like it may not have been much better. He was able to sell enough people into believing that he knew something, though, and that his products and ideas may have held the key to great returns – but it turned into a great mess. And his rise and fall did not take a long period of time, somewhere around a year in total. So this isn’t saying one can just lie their way through a grand life, but you can apparently go really big for a really short period of time. It’s difficult to imagine that people making such big deals did not spend some time looking into the situation, too. There had to be more than dreams behind these deals. Those big hopes, though, also undeniably played a part. So maybe at the end we are in a space where we can say be careful but also maybe we can only do so much, and we all remain susceptible. Warmly, Josh Bousquet Connect to Us ~ Facebook ~ Twitter When looking for final answers, the closer you can drill down into something the more you can fully appreciate all that’s involved in that conclusion. A CEO with a worth of $32 billion, however, isn’t going to be able to get that deep into many topics. Maybe then we shouldn’t in turn to give too deep a look into Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman saying that people who worked from home during the pandemic didn’t work as hard as they did in the office.
Upon first seeing this headline, I thought that it was a rather broad statement to make, for there was no way there wasn’t a sizable chunk of people (granted, it may be less than 50%) who were more productive at home. The article itself went on to highlight what a lot of people had to juggle (such as guiding children through schoolwork) at the same time, so they were still working hard even if not all their time was fully invested in their job. So now that this has all been able to shake itself out a bit – aren’t there certainly people who agree with Schwarzman and are glad to be back to the office? Aren’t there people who had a very difficult time with doing too much during the pandemic and glad that schooling and child care are back up and running? Aren’t there some people who were more productive by being able to have more control over their time, when they work, and when they didn’t? Then again, when running a large operation, it is easy to understand how Schwarzman must make some type of blanket statement to get the best possible outcome for his business. I don’t know how many employees he has, but I can appreciate there are enough of them that he can’t go through and give every one of them an individual opportunity to choose just how, where, and when they want to work. There are, of course, many tasks where those things will have to line up with the time of others to be the most productive and not have things lagging due to waiting on one person to finish a task. So what he is saying may truly be best for his company. At the same time, though, championing it as some grand final answer denies the truth of some people he is referring to. So in the end, there is some truth on both sides of this, like there is in most everything. Remembering that is something we can all do well to keep in mind more often (even if I am saying this as my own blanket statement). Warmly, Josh Bousquet Connect to Us ~ Facebook ~ Twitter In one of those stories that seems to never end, the Employee Retention Credit continues to grab headlines. The latest one began last week when the IRS announced that it is giving a way for employers to rescind inaccurate claims for the ERC if they fell victim to a scam that resulted in filing it.
Of course, one could interpret this as the IRS asking for others to help do their work for them. On the other hand, this is a way for businesses that have realized they were taken in by unsavory characters to avoid having to pay interest and penalties on any monies they could potentially receive. This comes after the IRS paused processing any new claims after an influx of hundreds of thousands recent ones. So If someone were to rescind their claim filing, it is not as if this was money that could be counted on being received anytime soon anyway. To that end, this seems a clear good reason for those who know their claim is illegitimate to pull it back. The result will be like it never even happened in the first place. This could also be a good time for those who are unsure of their claim to take some time to see if it was legitimate. After all, this is an actual credit that many received and helped many businesses through the pandemic. And it certainly is true that everyone who is eligible for it has not yet filed and received payment of a claim. But as with most scams, they begin with these seeds of truth and veer from there. What then should make you possibly question your claim? If you did not seek the filing yourself and it was marketed to you from an outside source, that should be the first potential warning sign. And this sign should become a blaring alarm if it came to you from someone you have not worked with before. This potential withdrawing of a claim can now give you the chance to instead consult someone you seek out, and ideally already trust and have a previous relationship with. After that, hopefully you will have an answer in which you can feel more confident. I understand that this may not be an easy thing to do when the money you could be receiving may be in the many thousands of dollars. But remember that amount and think about having to pay it back … with penalties and interest. Warmly, Josh Bousquet Connect to Us ~ Facebook ~ Twitter When one thinks of the IRS, the first response typically is a mixture of fear and anger, largely because their job is seen as taking away our money. This reaction may be an oversimplification of what the agency does but has enough grains of truth to be understandable. But when one looks deeper into it, it seems fair to question just how good the IRS is at getting that money.
This can be seen in recent tax gap projections released by the agency for tax years 2020 and 2021. If we were just doing some classroom grading, the agency may not be doing terrible as it achieved an 86.2% net compliance rate for 2020 and 86.3% for 2021 (this is essentially the percent of expected taxes owed that have been collected). If we go beyond that B-level grade mark, though, that still is a significant amount of money that the IRS expected and did not receive. For things feel worse when going beyond percentages to actual dollar amounts. For 2020, the IRS has a net tax gap of $539 billion not collected and for 2021 that number stands at $625 billion. Yep, for two years, that adds up to over a trillion dollars. It really feels like a government could do something good with that amount of money. And oh yeah, add to this that the IRS also offered new estimates of tax gaps for the periods of 2014-16 and 2017-19 that combined add up to more than another $300 billion. And to think us peons run around wildly for lottery jackpots once they start to approach only one billion. Now just what should be taxed and at what rate is going to be a political debate that never comes to a final answer. But it should be easier to agree that there’s a problem when a government expects to receive a certain amount of money and then 15% of it gets lopped off and is just wandering around elsewhere in the universe. Of course, discussing how to get this money back also turned into a political battle as recent increased funding to the IRS showed. And yes, there is definite debate to be had over just how the agency should go about fixing the gap. I did, however, think that it was worth mentioning this just to give appreciation for the size of the gap. For hopefully if it can be acknowledged that there is a problem, it gives a base of agreement to begin upon. Warmly, Josh Bousquet Connect to Us ~ Facebook ~ Twitter |
Archives
January 2024
Categories
All
|