In recognition of National Small Business Week, we look at what a bankruptcy lawyer knows about business. Everyone tells you what to do to succeed in business; you also need to know what not to do if you don’t want to fail. Running your own business is the classic American dream. It’s romantic and heroic. […]
How Guarantors Can Escape Tax On Soured Debt
Tax lawyer Bill Purdy and I shared a client with a small interest in a failed corporation with a huge SBA loan. Could our client escape the tax consequences should we be able to settle his liability on a million dollars in unpaid loan. Was the client looking at a million dollars of cancellation of […]
Know who you are when the business files bankruptcy
While knowing who you are may be central to philosophy and mental health, you wouldn’t think it poses a difficult question in a business bankruptcy. You wouldn’t think the word “you” would be so challenging. Yet, small business owners find it hard to separate themselves from the business, even when that business is incorporated. […]
Three Cheers For Entrepreneurs
Let’s hear it for entrepreneurs. Those brave, tireless people with a dream who start or run small businesses. They possess more energy and perseverance than most of us. They form the backbone of our economy. In honor of National Entrepreneurs Day, November 20th, let’s recap Soapbox’s best on being in business for yourself. It’s probably […]
Your Business Partnership Needs A Prenup
Financial partnerships are at least as challenging as marriages. And business deals don’t have love to smooth the rough spots in the relationship. The traditional marriage service ends with the charge that what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. That’s great with love, but not so great with money. Something will likely asunder […]
How Your Property Gets Sold In Your Partner’s Bankruptcy
It isn’t just marriage that can get you roped in to a bankruptcy case that isn’t your own. Own community property and a bankruptcy filing by your spouse or your soon-to-be ex can drag you into a bankruptcy court. But the issue is broader: joint ownership of any kind of asset in any state, community […]
Four Essential Habits For Successful Entreprenuership
Starting out in business for yourself? Congratulations. Small business, and businesses that were once small, form the tapestry of our economy. I’ve run my own small business for coming 40 years and my favorite clients in my business are other small business people. But, in the euphoria and exhaustion of starting up, don’t put off doing […]
What Asset of Failed Business Is Most Valuable?
Usually I rant about mistakes clients made when they incorporated their ongoing business. Come hard times for the business, those mistakes eat into our options for the owners survival when the corporation goes down. Invariably, the vendor accounts remain in the name of the proprietor, the stock may not have been issued, and it’s unclear whether there was an […]
Collections Is A Boogie Man For Businesses Too
“Being sent to collections” is a boogie man for businesses as well as for individuals, I learned this week. I was counseling a small business with lots of vendor debt. We were looking for a strategy that could keep them in business. When I suggested that management sort their payables into vendors they needed and […]
Preserving a Small Business through Bankruptcy
Chip Parker and I have been writing about bankruptcy issues for the self employed over on the BankruptcyLawNetwork.Chip pointed out that the bankruptcy of the shareholder does not protect the operations of a corporation that the debtor owns, since the corporation is not in bankruptcy, the shareholder is.The flip side of that proposition is that […]
