How Come We Always Owe Federal and State Taxes?

If you have to pay taxes every year, the cause is likely not due to a one time tax credit or deduction. Rather, it is likely due to a recurring event, such as holding investments that pay dividends each year and not paying estimated taxes each quarter to the government and state for that income.

Likely Cause for Owing Federal and State Taxes:

1. Claiming too many exemptions on their W-4 form (less withholding is taken out of each paycheck, causing their year end tax bill to be high)

2. One spouse is self employed and not paying estimated taxes

3. They have a lot of investment income each year and are not paying estimated taxes

How to correct the issue?

Number 1 is easy to fix, just lower your exemptions on your W-4 form. Number 2 and 3 take a little more work because you’ll need to calculate your estimated taxes.

To calculate your estimated tax each quarter try to estimate your expected adjusted gross income, taxable income, taxes, deductions, and credits for the current year as best as possible. You can use your prior year income, deductions, and credits as a starting point. Let’s say you expect your taxable income to be the same or great than last year, then pay 100% of last year’s tax bill divided by 4 for each quarter. But, if your income last year was greater than $150K if filing jointly or $75K separately, you have to pay 100% of last year’s tax bill divided by 4 for each quarter. If you expect this year you’ll make less, you can pay 90% of your estimated tax bill for this year but there is a greater change you’ll owe at the end of the year.

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Picking the Best Real Estate Conferences

Going to conferences and meeting other Realtors is a great way to stay ahead of the industry learning curve, but not all events are created equally. Some will open your eyes to new marketing strategies and networking opportunities, and others will be a waste of time. It’s common to see conferences billed as “The Real Estate Event of the Year,” and necessarily some of these fall short.

So how do you ensure the next conference you go to is the event of the year? It’s fairly straight forward, as long as you know what you want to learn, and who you want to meet.

Real estate conferences come in a wide variety of formats, from small weekly networking sessions to industry-wide events featuring a panel of the most successful brokers and marketing experts. Real Estate Connect, organized by Inman News once or twice per year, might be the industry’s largest event. It takes place in major cities across the nation every eight months or so, and always covers a wide range of topics, such as search engine optimization, interactive marketing, and market forecasts. Real Estate Connect typically draws more than 1,200 industry professionals – it’s so big that sub-conferences have been necessary in the past, so that attendees can network and share ideas exclusively on topics that interest them. The July 2007 edition of Real Estate Connect in San Francisco featured a sub-conference called Bloggers Connect, where the industry’s top web-writers compared notes with each other and passed on skills to new bloggers for a couple days before the main event.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) also lends its name to regular high-profile conferences for industry professionals around the world. In Fall, 2007, NAR sponsored events in Hong Kong, Paris, Florida, Greece, Singapore, Sao Paulo, and Guateng, South Africa on topics as diverse as international trade, human rights, and global home market trends. The NAR events help some of the nation’s brightest minds stay in touch with economic conditions abroad, and help put the domestic real estate market in perspective.

While Real Estate Connect and NAR events can usually be counted on for useful content, depending on what interests you, other high-profile conferences might not be as strong. Communicating on real estate forums and looking at previous events held by a particular company is a good way to find out which conferences will work best for you.

For Realtors based in large cities, trial and error might work for attending conferences, but for anyone who has to travel to an event, a little research can go a long way. Thankfully, most conferences produce extensive discussion before and after the fact, so there is usually a lot of information readily available.

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Dental Marketing Consultant Ed O’ Keefe On The New Dental Marketing Ideas

In this article, dental marketing consultant Ed O’ Keefe shares about the new dental marketing ideas developed for the dental marketing business. For the dental marketing consultant, one of the best ways to become successful in the business of dental marketing is to develop new ideas, like creating a “gameplan”. What does this idea of gameplan refer to? It refers to developing a gameplan that would help you to double new patients in your dental marketing business. So the more new patients that you have, the more successful you will be in your business. Developing this kind of idea is one way to be on top of the dental marketing area. Then for the dental marketing consultant, there’s also the Internet.

Nowadays, more and more people are using the Internet in their everyday activities. Be it in shopping through e-bay, looking up for prices of cars in automobile sites, or simply logging in to social networking sites, the Internet has been a part of people’s lives already. With these facts in mind, the Internet itself can be considered as a one of the new dental marketing ideas. We can use the power of the Internet as a new strategy to become successful in the field of dental marketing. So you would ask, “How can the Internet help you become successful in dental marketing?” or “What makes it fit to be considered as one of the new ideas for dental marketing?”. The dental marketing consultant will also provide you with answers to these questions.

PART I: On Creating A Gameplan…..

So how do you create a gameplan? The answer to this is that you should come up and set for goals. The dental marketing consultant would advise you to set goals for: (1) how many new patients you want; (2) what type of patients you want to attract; (3) how many referrals you want to generate; and (4) how much you expect each patient to be worth.

#1: Setting Goals for How Many New Patients You Want:

The dental marketing consultant would say that setting goals on how many new patients you would like to have can be one of the very helpful ideas. Set the number of new patients that you would have, let’s say, for a month. Having this number in your mindset can help you target a specific number of patients at a fixed rate in a month (let’s say 3 patients in a month). Then as time passes by, you will be able to add more new patients to those fixed numbers of new patients ( let’s say from the fixed number of 3 patients, you will be able to have 4 to 5 patients in a month, etc.).

#2: Setting Goals for What Type of Patients You Want To Attract:

The dental marketing consultant would also emphasize that determining the type of new patients that you would want to attract can also be helpful in dental marketing. These could vary from patients from different kinds of status and professions (lawyers, accountants, engineers, etc.). Having these ideas would help you in setting up the income that you would like to have in a month; as to how much you would charge for this type of patient, etc. depending on their status and professions.

#3: Setting Goals for How Many Referrals You Want To Generate:

As you will be able to satisfy your new patients with your services, the dental marketing consultant assures you that there would be a very big possibility that the number of patients that you have set for in a month will increase in number.. through their referrals. They would come up with ideas of introducing you to their friends, relatives, etc. Your patient would say, “Hey, I’m very satisfied with the services that my dentist gives me… so maybe I would introduce them to my family and friends!” Through this, you surely be able to be more successful in your dental marketing business!

#4: Setting Goals for How Much You Expect Each Patient To Be Worth:

For this part of the gameplan, the dental marketing consultant would advise you to set the price on how much each new patient would be worth, or what the “lifetime value of each new patient is”. Say for example, you would come up with ideas that for your patient who is an accountant you would charge $900, for your patient who is a lawyer you would charge $950, and so on. Having this kind of planning in dental marketing can help you set how much income you would have within a month or a year.

PART II: On Using The Internet….

As one of the new ideas for dental marketing, the dental marketing consultant will also emphasize the importance of the Internet. The Internet is useful due to the following facts:

(1) More and More People Are Going On-line:

As stated earlier by the dental marketing consultant, more and more people are using the Internet in their daily activities. Growing numbers of people are searching on-line compared to any other media for their service providers; to get directions to places they want to go, to chat in social media directories, to get in touch with friends and other people through various social networking sites, etc. Now as you build your own website for your dental marketing business, and as more and more people are making use of the Internet, make sure that it would be presented in a way that could increase the traffic of your visitors (which could be your potential patients).

(2) The Power Of Keywords:

Coming up with a new ideas for good key words can help you become successful in dental marketing as well. The dental marketing consultant would advise you to use specific keywords (such as dental, marketing, or any specific keyword that you can come up with). If done correctly, you can literally dominate your area in the Internet… and you will be able to overcome your competitors in the business!

(3) Every Visit Counts:

As one of the best ideas, getting new patients through the Internet in dental marketing is absolutely FREE! The more visitors you have on your site, the higher the ranking of your page is. So, if your site ranks higher in the search engine, then you can get people to find your own website without having to pay Google, Yahoo, etc. for every click. And this means your site will possibly be much more “famous” than any other site in the net. So that’s why the dental marketing consultant would emphasize the fact that every visit counts!

(4) The Best Of Both Worlds:

If you have ideas of getting free (or natural) traffic and get paid traffic as well, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds in the Internet! For the dental marketing consultant, the key is that when someone searches for “Your Town Cosmetic Dentist” in the Internet, you would want to be the one that is displayed all over Google or yahoo. Whether your visitors would look up, down, to the left or to the right, it doesn’t matter. You want all doors to lead to you!

So, the dental marketing consultant reminds you to keep these goals in mind as you go on with your dental marketing business. Always remember that having a gameplan will always help you to make it to the top of your business! We can also clearly see the importance of the Internet in the business of dental marketing. Having these new ideas for dental marketing will not only give you more and more patients, but lots of income as well. Therefore, the more patients that you have, the more rewarding it would be!

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Current Limits For FHA Mortgage Loans and FHA Jumbo Loans

FHA Loans can be used for a variety of circumstances in today’s market. FHA loan limits in certain, higher cost areas of the country are actually higher than those for conventional loans (in some cases, much higher). They have become the most popular loan type in America today and for good reason. FHA Mortgage Loans allow for a much higher Loan-to-Value (LTV) when compared to conventional loans and FHA loans carry very low interest rates over a broad range of credit profiles.

FHA loan limits vary greatly over different areas of the country. In most counties, the FHA maximum loan amount is $271,050. This limit is impacted by the average median income for that area. In other, higher cost areas of the country, the loan limits can be higher and in some cases, substantially higher. The maximum FHA home loan amount in any area right now is $729,750.

FHA that are over $417,000 are considered “FHA Jumbo Loans” and carry very similar terms and interest rates as lower FHA mortgage amounts. FHA Jumbo Mortgages allow a home buyer to purchase a home and finance up to 96.5% of the purchase price. Other loan programs do not allow for such a high LTV in today’s lending climate. This is one of the reasons that FHA mortgage loans are so popular today.

In addition to the FHA Maximum Loan Amount for a give area, FHA home loans also carry certain Debt-to-Income Ratios (DTI) that determine how much of a loan amount a borrower can afford for their particular circumstances. Current FHA maximum DTI Ratios are 31% for the housing ratio (meaning the new house payment should not be more than 33% of the total documented income) and 43% for the total expense ratio (meaning the new total monthly expenses should not be more than 43% of the borrowers documented income). These ratios can be exceeded with compensating factors, such as an excellent credit score and payment history.

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