HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Click The Pumpkin

GETTING A LOAN IS NOT AS EASY AS IT USED TO BE - TOUGHER CREDIT STANDARDS

(INC.com) -- The number of small-business loans continues to decline as banks raise standards on personal credit ratings, leaving fewer owners able to access working capital, according to lenders and policy experts. "Lending standards have tightened and loan demand is down considerably," Chad Moutray, the chief economist at the Small-Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, said this week at a roundtable on small-business credit held by the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington. Other panelists urged policymakers to look beyond traditional bank loans. "I think we need to get busy in developing game plans and getting more creative," said Andrew Sherman, a small-business policy expert at Dickstein Shapiro, a Washington-based law firm. Sherman called ongoing uncertainties in the financial market a "cloud that's getting in the way of our productivity and our competitiveness."

FOLLOW THIS ADVICE TO HELP ELIMINATE SPAM

Here is some sound advice from Snopes.com. This may eliminate some spam from your mailbox if you follow it.

1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to '10' of your friends, or sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to.

The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.

2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie ' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers - - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor (PLEASE) by sending this information to them. You will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's don't make it easy for them!

Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress/Parliament or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.

INVESTING IN TODAY'S CHALLENGING MARKET

The stock market has made headlines this year with record volatility, record drops, and even record gains. And while many investors are still sitting on the sidelines, you may already be looking for bargains amidst the wreckage. So, we're writing to alert you to a possible problem with acting now.

Are you considering buying mutual funds in a taxable account (as opposed to an IRA or 401K)? Then you should be aware that most funds distribute capital gains this time of year. These distributions are taxable to you as long-term capital gains, even if you just bought the fund.

The average U.S diversified stock fund is down about 33% for the year. Funds in most other categories are down as well. But many of those funds sold assets for nice profits earlier this year. This means you may get socked with a nasty tax surprise!

There are generally two ways to avoid this bite. The first is to find funds without capital gains to distribute. The second is to wait until a fund actually pays out capital gain distributions. Make sure that you discuss with your broker to see if they expect distributions, and if so, when they will be paid.

Today's challenging market makes it even more important to invest with an eye on taxes.

JUST HOW BAD IS THE ECONOMY? MAYBE YOU CAN'T BELIEVE ALL YOU HEAR

All we seem to hear is bad economic news. If you read the "real" economic news, the economy is not great, but certainly not as bad as you would think. The "talking heads" on the tube would make you think that the big depression is coming back. As the columnist George Will recently said, "an airplane that lands safely does not make news." Did you know that in October the economy rose by about 3%? That is off from past growth, but is still positive.

Here is an article that I thought might shed a little light on the subject.

(Star Tribune, Minneapolis) -- Suppose that everything you know is wrong.

· Consider the commonly held belief that corporate America is headed into a recession, tapped out for cash. Not so. Cash compared with total corporate debt is near a 50-year high.

· Certainly consumer debt appears unmanageable, with late payments nearing record levels on credit cards and real estate, right? Not true. The percentage of home loans 30 days or more past due, while rising, is nowhere near record levels.

· You say troubled home and auto loans are dragging down the economy as never before? Wrong again. While together such loans lopped 1.5 points off U.S. economic growth in recent quarters, it has been worse. In the final three months of last year, housing and auto pared more than 2 points from the chief barometer of economic progress.

“Most of that, I’ve got to believe, is behind us,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. Paulsen argues that the economy has more going for it than popularly believed. Paradoxically, the president, Congress and Federal Reserve officials have stoked fears instead of calming them, in Paulsen’s view. “We’ve never had a fear crisis like this,” he said. “All of our monetary and fiscal tools are to restore economic fundamentals. When it comes to fear, our toolbox is empty.” In earlier economic crises, three of every four problems were fundamental roadblocks to economic growth, Paulsen said. “This one is three-quarters fear.”

CALL TO ACTION

A NEW ADMINISTRATION….NOW WHAT?

As we have heard, “change is coming.” We are concerned that one change that is coming is higher taxes! Given the projected increases in the federal income tax, capital gains, and qualified dividend rates, you may want to take action before December 31st to keep more of your money in your pocket. To determine if you'll be affected, we have prepared the enclosed checklist for you. Please click on this link to review the checklist: Call to Action Checklist.

If you feel that you might be impacted by any or all of these items, contact us! If you already have a pretax appointment scheduled with us, we will be discussing these items at that time.

We are watching the activity in Washington D.C. very closely so that we can best serve you, therefore we will keep you posted. Let us know if you have any questions.

It is a pleasure serving you!

Larry Kopsa CPA

CHRISTMAS CAKES

The Holidays are upon us...what a busy time of year! If you plan to do any baking in the midst of all the holiday chaos, you might enjoy the following link. Pick A Cake

I thought it was pretty cool. I forwarded it to my wife... I'm not sure if she will get the hint. All you have to do is click on a link and the recipe will come up.

Enjoy!

Larry Kopsa CPA