 with the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunity. Thank you so much for joining us today for our tax credits for small business webinar. It's the perfect time of year to make sure you are on board with what you need for your taxes. And before we get started, I know our director is joining us. I would like to give her an opportunity to welcome everyone. Hello. Hey, Melissa. Hey, how's everybody doing? Are we going to get started? Yeah, I just said you might want to welcome everyone. OK, sure. It's good to see everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I know we had a lot of people register, had over 100 registrations, so I'm pretty sure that people will start falling into the slots soon. I want to thank everybody for taking this time to invest in your business and yourself through this webinar today. What we wanted to do starting last year with all the changes that IRS are making and some things that we said may be coming in the future, we just wanted to make sure that we were doing our due diligence to provide needed resources to you so that you could be better prepared for tax season. So we very, very, very, very thankful for having Shilia joining us and being a part of this effort as well as the Women's Business Center and SBA. And I think SBDC is also on here today. So thank you. Again, thank you for taking the time to invest, not only in your business, but in yourselves with information, because information is power. And I also want to take this time to thank Aisha for doing such a great job and the team. Carla, Latanya, Kalina, Tanya, Brad, Cassandra, and I don't want to leave anybody out. I think I got everybody for putting this together. Everything that we do in this office is a team effort because we want to do the best for our small business community. So thank you. Thank you, Melissa. And just to let everyone know, if you could please keep your audio on mute right now until we get to the question and answer portion of the presentation. Also, we will be recording this event. So if you would like to go back and view it, you will get a link to the recording later this afternoon along with a survey that we asked that you complete so that we can continue to provide these trainings and any additional trainings that may be helpful for your small business. So we're going to move on into our brief presentation on the different offices and partners that we have on here before we get to the main event. So in our office at OBO, we have several program areas to assist with increasing the capacity of our small minority women and veteran owned businesses. One of those is our commercial lending. We offer financial assistance to startup and existing businesses for the growth expansion retention and the creation of new jobs, as well as to redevelop our commercial corridors. So if anyone on here has a need for some commercial lending or if they need some technical assistance when it comes to lending, please feel free to contact our office. Our loan officer is Brett Whiting. We also have our contractor and supplier diversity program area. We offer training and support for city initiatives that are designed to increase our local contractors' capacity to compete for government contracts and other procurement opportunities. It's really important to the city that our procurement reflect the diversity of our great city. And we do that through various programs, including our mental protege program, our local business enterprise preference policy, and our Columbia Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. Next, we have technical assistance, education, advocacy. That's business development assistance and courses for startups and existing businesses that are looking to grow and expand. So those are the workshops that we provide. Over the past two years, most of those have been virtual workshops, but we are moving into in-person events over the next few months. So stay tuned for more information about those opportunities. We offer a minority business opportunities directory. This is a living document that we update as needed. And the purpose of this directory is to provide small businesses and our new entrepreneurs information that they normally received on an in-person event. But we offer this booklet, and we can put that information in the chat so you can click on that and have access to different information regarding our department and other community partners and their procurement opportunities. It's really important that you know the different departments and what they procure, because there's opportunities for you to partner with us to provide those business services. Our upcoming webinars, we're very excited. Our partners on this call have joined us to offer a business planning boot camp. And it's going to be a four-part series that we're going to offer during the month of April. April 7th is the first one next Thursday through the 28th. Every Thursday in April, we'll have this business plan boot camp. And we are very excited. We put a lot of work into this. And so I will put the registration link in the chat for that. We also are partnering with the National Association of Minority Contractors and Foresight Communication to offer industry day in April. And this will be an in-person event, so stay tuned for more information to register for that. But we'll have some panel discussions and exhibitors that will present best practices and contract opportunities for our minority contractors. So that's going to be a great day where we get to see people in person again. So we're looking forward to that in April. Here's our contact information for our office. We are located in downtown Columbia at 1401 Main Street on the 4th floor. You can give us a call at 803-545-3950. Our email is at odo.columbia.sc.gov. We'd love to have a discussion with you on how our office can provide different resources and tools to help expand the capacity of your business. So at this time, I'm going to turn it over to the lovely Sheryl Sally to talk about the Benedict College Women's Business Center. Well, thank you so much, Aisha. And thank you all for having us and allowing us to participate in today's session, such a valuable session. It is looking forward to hearing a lot and learning a lot. But as Aisha said, I'm Sheryl Sally. I serve as the director for the Benedict College Women's Business Center, where we are primarily funded by the Small Business, US Small Business Administration, the SBA. And I'm just so happy to have the opportunity to serve under them and to serve the women entrepreneurs in South Carolina. Next slide, please. So just to give you a little bit about the Women's Business Center, combining our purpose, our mission, our vision, we want to make sure that we're doing all that we can to create a gateway out of poverty for our socially and economically disadvantaged women entrepreneurs. And we do that by providing them the tools that they need, the information that they need, the education, and programming, and one-on-one counseling, all the things that they need to either start, grow, or expand their businesses. Which, in turn, create equal opportunities for our minority women entrepreneurs and help to stimulate the growth and the development in South Carolina. Next slide, please. Who do we serve? As I said earlier, our focus is on women entrepreneurs, particularly women of color. Now, while we do target the women entrepreneurs, we do not discriminate. I'll say that on every presentation, regardless of race or gender, we will serve everyone. We do startups. We help startups and existing businesses or profit organizations, all industry segments and businesses across South Carolina. Next slide. This is just a snapshot of some of the core services and COVID services that we provide across the network of business service providers. And I'm not going to get into that to that, because that will steal some of SBA's thunder. But we provide one-on-one counseling and the programming, as mentioned, our websites and things like this, that while we're here today, but business planning. We always want to talk about what you need to do to plan to start your business or strategically plan to grow your business if you're already in business, business management, business systems, resiliency, and recovery. Pivoting has been the buzzword during this pandemic. We started and launched the WBC in September 2020. And we launched having to not only work off the plan, which was a proposal to operate the WBC and provide these services, but operated, being creative because we're in the pandemic. So we launched in a pivot status, if you will, but still being relevant to the customers, creating the processes while we're serving customers all at the same time. But we help guide entrepreneurs and individuals through financial management, how to access capital, how to position your company for lending and to receive funds and so on and so forth. Government contracting and certifications, how to navigate those orders if you're looking to provide services or products to the government, whether it's city, county, state, federal, and in the private sector, but all about strategic planning. And all of it's done, one-on-one counseling, at no cost to the individuals that we serve. Next slide. This is just a snapshot of some of the staff that we currently have. And we are just in the middle right now of onboarding new staff members. And when I say the wealth of knowledge and experience with our staff members and the technical assistance consultants that we work with, that we partner with, it's just overwhelming at times. We're so fortunate to have all the expertise in the room with the common passion among all of us is to help our entrepreneurs, thereby helping South Carolina. Next slide. This is a snapshot of some of the upcoming tentative workshops. We partnered with Nixon Pruitt. We partnered with Miss Tutwiler Dawkins, who you'll hear from shortly. And with Truist Bank, we're gonna do some bankable workshops. We've done some business licensing, but we're so glad to have those technical assistance providers. We cannot do it without them. And we tried to make sure that we're providing, giving our entrepreneurs and our clients at the WBC access to them at no cost to the entrepreneur. So we're glad of those partnerships with them. Next slide. We can't do it by ourselves, even with the staff that we have. So we're so fortunate to have a network of other like minds, of like minds around the state that we partner with and collaborate with, that share information about workshops just like this. So they share it with their database so that we can capture everybody in the net. So we're so glad for this network of partners, of resource providers across South Carolina. This is just a snapshot of what we have and we're in the midst of launching and we're the new grants that we have for our rule development, rule mobile initiative with a focus on certain areas, underserved areas in South Carolina with our mobile and creative entrepreneur demonstration grant, the areas of City of North Charleston, Allendale, Dillon, Alboro, Lee, Bamberg and Claredon. So we're gonna focus on those areas, but at the same time, we have a grant to, it's a statewide grant, our community navigator and the WBC is a whole, we serve the whole state of South Carolina, but we receive funds in addition to the grant opportunities from the SBA, from Wells Fargo, from the truest foundation. Next slide, I think I've put going, I may have taken, but we also have a grant from Boeing and all of those grants support our efforts, what we want to do to serve not only the, where we are here in Columbia, but all of South Carolina. So it helps us to throw that wide net across the whole state of South Carolina. So please, please, please be in touch. Let us know if it's anything that we can do to help you. Thank you so much again. This is our contact information. So I am going to turn the Zoom podium back over to you, Ayesha. Thank you again. Thank you so much. We appreciate the partnership with Benedict College Women's Business Center. And next we have Angela Brewer with the US Small Business Administration. Thank you Ayesha. Good afternoon everyone. As she stated, my name is Angela Brewer. I am a business opportunity specialist with the South, the South Carolina District Office of SBA. My primary focus or my primary goal or job, whatever you want to call it is to assist small business who are trying to get certified to do federal contract work. Next slide. SBA works in like change, spark action, so small business can confidently start. We do our starting part by offering counseling. We have our women's business center. We have three here in the state. We have Benedict College. We have here in Columbia. We have IHOP in Charleston, and we have community works bank in Greenville area. So we have three small businesses, three women's business center that can assist you. We have the SBDC and we have SCORE. Then we have Grow and Expand. We help you grow and expand your business through federal contract and getting you certified to do federal contract work and expand through loans. We don't do direct lending, but we assist small, we aid the bank or give bank financing so they can assist small business to expand and grow their business. And then we have the recovery. As you all know, we're coming out of this pandemic. Thank God. I'm so happy to be free of this pandemic. We're coming out of this pandemic, but during the pandemic we offer the PPP and the EIDL loan for those who was fortunate enough to get it. But it's currently over. The final push of the EIDL is winding down. So over the next few weeks, a couple of months, that will be gone and we'll be back to business as usual. We offer the Start, Grow, Expand and Recover. So if you need any assistance, we don't do our direct counseling that goes to our resource partner, but if you need any assistance, we can direct your gadgets to the nearest person represented close to you next. We have three work sites. We have the main office that's here in Columbia, that's located in the federal building on Assembly Street. If you're in the Charleston area, we have the alternative work site that's on Ashley Falls State and we recently got one in Spartanburg. So you can reach the number of the contact information is right there on the screen. So if you need assistance in the local area, please reach out to our local offices and someone will be able to assist you. Thank you, Laisie. I think the next slide is questions. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Angela. And next we're going to have our tax credits for small business. We're going to go ahead and get into the meat of our event today. Shilia Tuttwiler-Dolphins is the IRS enrolled agent since 2013. He's a QuickBooks Pro Advisor. Also, Shilia's experienced international tax subject matter expert and a previous team lead from one of the leading national accounting firms. We really appreciate our partnership with Shilia. She's helping a lot of our clients and she continues to be a great resource for our office and our partners. So at this point, Shilia, I'm going to let you share your screen. Can everyone see my screen? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you guys for allowing me to have this opportunity. I want to first thank the mayor, Dan, recommend and I issue for this bringing up the conversation about business, a general business tax credits. We often talk about individual tax credits such as earning income credit, the American opportunity credit, and there are advanced child tax credit. There are so many more, but very rarely do we actually create a scenario where we're discussing business tax credits. One of the things I'm going to say prior to you starting off is that it's critical that you have strategies in place. And when you look at business tax credits, you can do it to ensure that they align with your credit with your strategies. Also, you definitely need your business plan. Ms. Shiro has already talked about that prior to that, but we want to have those in place. Ensure that you file your taxes. A lot of the scenarios or the different things that were offered during the pandemic, a lot of our small businesses weren't able to be able to take advantage of those is because they had not filed proper tax credits. Finally, as we go through this and this is a snapshot of the business credits, we want to make sure that we have good partners in place that understand your strategies, help you assist you with the tax credits and walk you through the process because some of the business tax credits are very straightforward. Others of them will, you need someone in the background that understand what's going on in order for them to work for you. Some of the business tax credits are designed to help the communities. Some of them are designed to help you their employer and some of them are designed to help you or your by helping your employees. One of the tax credits that the mayor actually requested us to talk about was the employee retention credit. Unfortunately that credit is terminated as it was dealt with wages that were paid in the fourth quarter of 2021 that really dealt with the recovery stage. It started in December of 2020. It moved through 2021 and the infrastructure bill actually terminated that. That credit in itself allowed employers who retained employees during the pandemic a credit up to $10,000 to the employment taxes which were up to 50% of the qualified wages. It was up to $10,000 which was worth the credit but as I forestated this particular business credit is expired. Let's move to our credits that are currently available. One of the credits that we have is the $10,000 credit. That credit is related to providing reusable or clean air, clean water designed to produce energy from the sun and also qualified rehabilitated buildings. Some of these credits are available through solar energy and small wind projects but if you are interested in those you still have ample time to participate in them because it is December 31, 2023. One of the credits that I think will help the community specifically with buildings that need to be rehabilitated. One of the things that one of the requirements is that it has to be a certified historic structure. That means you can't just go get your grandmother's house and rebuild it. It has to be something that is considered historic and has a certification. The expenses of the building are either within a 24-month period or within a 60-month period if it is under a written architectural plan. The goal for this is to create a rehabilitable building which is a historical structure. The rule requires that you maintain 75% of the external walls and the internal structure must be retained. It also requires that you have an empty building. It has to be actually an occupied building before the rehabilitation begins. There are certain other criteria that you need to follow with that before a snapshot scenario. This is a general information. The work opportunity credit is one that is designed to assist individuals who may not necessarily be what we would call employable. It's designed to assist those who are considered your ex-convicts and I'll go through the whole list but the maximum amount of the tax credit is $2,400. There is a rate that's applied to it as well and there is an hourly wage requirement on it again. My next screen will explain it a little bit better. It's a federal tax credit to employees who are hiring individuals from certain target groups. It is joined with other workforce programs and it is available until December 31, 2021. Also, there may be some as typically when tax laws walk through the process, for instance the tax laws that changed in 2019 or 2018, some of those will expire as of 2025 unless Congress comes along and make those changes. The employer has to submit a pre-screening notice. The employer also has to work with designated local agencies in the state and it is also, goes to the next screen, deals with those who are formerly incarcerated, recipients of state assistance, definitely the veterans, residents who have been incarcerated as impairment zones or rural renewal counties, individuals who receive governmental assistance as it relates to SNAP and those who are also considered individuals experiencing long-term employment. If you are interested in this tax credit program, you can go to our local employment agency to see what they offer on the back end because these are federal guidelines administered by the state. The retirement plan start-up cost is one where we as employers can assist our employees. We always, as we look at businesses, we can assist our employees and we can assist our employees as they are eligible, but then we set ourselves up for a succession plan where we can retire. With that being said, as an employer, you can assist your employee by taking or starting up a financial advisor. They are relatively easy to set up and they will also allow your employee to reach the benefits of establishing a retirement account as well. Some of the requirements are you have at least 100 employees or less. You have at least $5,000. You have at least one participant which means that they would have worked for you at least three years or you have not had someone that is considered an employee now where they participated in a contribution plan that was available from your firm within the last five years. As an employer, you can receive a tax credit as well as benefit the employee. One of the things that we always talk about and I know we talk about insurance and for us as employers hiring someone and giving them insurance, it can be used as an employee. 50% of the premiums paid can be used as a credit. 35% of the premiums for tax exempt employers and you have fewer than 25 full-time employees. You have to pay at least 50% of the cost and the employee picks it up. If you don't have a tax you are able to get a refund or cash in hand as long as it does not exceed your income tax withholding and Medicare. You have to have the employee on payroll. I forgot to turn it off. The next one is one that each of us can benefit from and is called the qualified business income deduction. When Congress in 2018 and 2019 lowered the rate of corporation taxes that came along and said, what about the sole proprietors and those that are partnerships? How do they benefit? That is a tax deduction based on your business income. If you are scheduled to see, you can qualify for this as well. You made $1,000 for your income. 20% of that combined with your income is deductible. It is available to those who makes less than $164,000 and or 329.8 for joint filers to qualify. It is available to those who make less than $1,000 for their business income deductions such as if you actively participated if you have rental properties this is also available for you as well. There are some actively participation is one of those. Whether or not it is a deduction for that as well but it is a deduction and if you are preparing your return and you have a schedule C on your 1040 you will see a line item for qualified business income deduction. Unfortunately, the qualified business income deduction is not a part of South Carolina so when you are looking at your South Carolina return you will see a line item and you will see a line item. I was quite amazed at some of the credits that South Carolina has and those are credits as it relates to small business job credits and I am not going to read all of this but the credit is limited up to 50% of the tax liability and some credits are non-refundables some credits you can carry forward when we are talking about refundable that means even if you do not have a liability you have the ability to get the refund if a credit is non-refundable then that credit is only up to the amount you owe example one is I have a credit of $1,000 $500 I get the refund of the $500 same scenario I have a credit of $1,000 as it relates to non-refundable I have a credit of $1,000 my tax bill is $500 that means that my tax my amount of credit can only go up to my tax liability which is the $5,000 I have a credit of $1,000 I have a credit of $1,000 typically what that means is that if there is any unused credit in year one then we are able to take that credit in year two you also want to make sure you are using appropriate forms typically the form 3800 is the wrap-up of all your business credits that I have mentioned that is available at this time has a specific form your qualified business income deduction rolls into your 1040 A but it is also a part of a form called the 8995 or the 8995 A so you want to make sure that you are using the appropriate forms and this is when if you are doing doing your own taxes ensuring that you have at least some guidance as it relates to taking the appropriate credits that you are allowed or you can take the apprentice credit while it does not have any it does not have a carry forward mechanism it does allow you to provide services to those who may be walking into the field and that tax credit is up to $1,000 per apprentice and finally the credit for the state contractor for the socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses this credit taxpayers who have contract with the state of South Carolina who subcontract with socially or economically disadvantaged small businesses or can have a credit up to 4% of the payments you can only claim this credit for 10 years and there is a particular form that is involved with that and that is the end of my presentation I know I threw a lot in at a stop sharing right now I knew I threw a lot of information in a very short period of time there are a number of forms that you have to go through one of the areas specifically as it relates to the IRS www.IRS.gov is an excellent place for you to research your business they actually have a small business page that's available and you can use it to provide you with information about your regular LLCs it will provide you about any credits that are related such as your meal credits or travel credits or those type of credits that are involved it will also give you a guideline as it relates to what you need to do in order to file it at this time we'll open it up for questions if any of you have any questions feel free to type it in the chat or unmute yourself and ask any questions you may have and I did put the link to the IRS don't be shy great opportunity no worries I have a question can you go into a little more detail about business structure and any additional guidance you can give based on what information is needed that sets those different structures apart from each other some things that they can just start to pull together as far as documentation that they're going to need to help expedite their taxes and getting their taxes prepared I know documentation is often hard for a lot of us but I think that's something that would be helpful thank you so that is an excellent question let's start off with the LLC the LLC limited liability companies and theoretically businesses are governed by a particular state within South Carolina and I have to I'm from Atlanta we have one of the best small business portal where we can almost a step by step a step by step guidelines as it relates to starting a business corporate structure organizational structure is critical if you are an LLC you are considered a limited liability company however to the IRS is considered a disregarded entity meaning that you file a schedule that rolls into your 1040 your schedule becomes your theoretical W2 within the schedule see your tax on your net or your loss which means that as an owner you're not necessarily you can't necessarily pay yourself wages when I'm doing your books I'm looking at who you paid advertising and all of the additional expenses however the balance of that is considered owner's transfer so you're taxed on that from a personal level so it flows through your schedule see and then that's tax with your 1040 now LLC can become what we call a 1120 as shareholder but that has to be done that has to be done by permission from the IRS you need to fill a form 2553 to request that the IRS treat your organization as a 1120 as that same LLC is still a limited liability company as it relates to the state well for tax purposes everything is rolled into your 1120 as so then that becomes a tax return in itself which also flows back into your 1040 all organizations or tax individually with the exception of a corporation so I have 1120 as I found a tax return whatever that gain or loss is goes into my 1040 and then I'm taxed based on my ordinary game the difference between an LLC and an 1120 as is and there are a number of differences but the major differences is I have the ability to pay myself I can have my wages take my income I can have my social security Medicare federal as state taxes take it out of that but on the state side you have not changed your LLC designation that same LLC if it's two people not husband and wife and they want to for the purposes debt income etc. can become a partnership and then you will follow 1065 the same respect is that that person provided that they are a participating or a managing partner can receive a salary as well and that itself flows through my 1040 the LLC is taxed and in addition to that there is self employment tax so there are two taxes that are involved the 1120 as is I'm able to take wages which means I am paying for my social security and all of the other that's being with hell which means that when it comes into the tax return it's not tax based on self employment as it relates to my ordinary work rate the partnership the same I'm having my withholdings taken I get a W2 whatever the loss again is that flows through my tax return and then that's taxed at the individual level the 1120C the Incs the corporations those have a whole different tax regime that's a different tax they pay their taxes at that level meaning that if I tax if Tutwala Docs become an Inc then Tutwala Docs will be taxed at that particular rate and then show your Tutwala will be taxed at those particular rates so there are some level double tax action as it relates to the corporation but that is what it is from a tax level as it relates from a legal or state level is clear that you need to let me back up it's critical that you talk to an attorney to have them have a picture of where you are trying to go and what it is that you are not accomplished to determine what is the best organizational type for you the organizational type not only determines how you are taxed but it also determines what is your liability as it relates to if someone falls in your building if someone decides to sue you can they attach themselves to your property so the purpose of designing a structure is to create a shell around your personal assets as well as liabilities but it also reflects in your taxation thank you next question while I am waiting on questions in the visual taxes if you decide that you are not ready yet that is fine please file the 4868 which is the extension to file that gives you the opportunity to file as of October the 15th we had a deadline extension 2020 we had a deadline extension in 2021 there will not be a deadline extension in 2022 so if you have not filed you are still working on getting your paperwork please file that extension as well the backside of that is if you owe that extension to pay it gives you the extension to file so the interest in what you owe starts kicking in April the following month so if you know that you owe and you need to file an extension make your payment as much of your payment as you can so if you are not ready please file that extension prior to that some of the things that will affect us as it relates to the 2021 tax return is definitely the recovery rebate the economic impact payment however you want to call it the return because it will affect your refund and when you send your return in and the IRS says okay I paid you that $1400 that can reduce that as well the advanced child tax credit even though the child tax credit has become totally refundable and it's $3000 for anyone over the age of 5 and 3600 under the age of 5 whatever amounts you receive between July and December that is going to reduce your refund as well so those are the two things that you want to take a look at the IRS is still behind a couple of years ago we sent our return in we sent our money in our account that's not happening right now they're behind what the IRS said was paper is kryptonite to them so if filing your return will give you a better chance I think Tyesha has a call Tyesha you can unmute hi my apologies can you hear me yes my name is Tyesha and I have a question I currently reside in New York and I also do business in South Carolina and purchasing property in South Carolina as well so what I was asking is how would the correlation if you were mentioning a couple of things or a couple of advantages in South Carolina how would that pertain to me or be affected with me being an out of state being an out of state resident who is purchasing real estate and doing different transactions in the state of South Carolina you know I do work with the SBA currently as far as like the IDL but with me like I said being a resident of New York is there any differentiation or is there anything that I can do generally there is a reflection if you're not a resident of the state most of the credits that I mentioned however were federally so those in itself would apply regardless of your location as long as you are in the United States and you're not attached to a foreign entity however I will say this that typically what happens is when you are a resident of one state and you operate business in another state you have to file a non resident return I know with the and I don't recall it before the pandemic but I know in the last couple of years when you purchase property in South Carolina they have you complete a form and if there are any gains on that property or if you're selling a property they ask you to provide them with a form and if there are gains on it they immediately tax you at the time of the sale which means if you file the return based on your complete picture you may be given a refund but I would say that typically when you're dealing with state it for the most part for the most part deals with residents but that would be something that would contact my accountant that I'm working with in order to see all of the ramifications of that and someone asked the question Monica asked the business has not physically open yet so she asked should she look into a 1120s request theoretically if you have a net gain in your business then of course I would actually look at 1120s request however you always want to gauge three things and three things with any decision you make this relates to depreciation amortarization expenses how I'm going to organize my business you want to look at the federal applications but you also want to look at the state when you file when you create an 1120s your taxes may be lowered because you're able to integrate your W-2s into the business income your filing requirements will change which means that I'm not filing one return I'm filing two returns you've got to pay yourself which means I have to have payroll there may be workers comp that's involved in that so you have to gauge is it financially feasible for me to create additional expenses by creating the 1120s if my self-employment taxes are only $700 because filing an 1120s the going rate for just preparing that return is $700 judging those two are critical when you make those decisions also the one thing I say and this is not only this is not only about tax this is about your general broad range of businesses this is what we call the prisoner's game the prisoner's game is I put these different scenarios in and based on move one how will move to react also will move to handle that or will move to or will move to fall in line so with that being said how is this going to affect my cash flow how is this going to affect my capital gains how is this going to affect my operating business and specifically as we are moving out of the pandemic and we want to be more visible in the community does a brick and mortar does a brick and mortar that is going to tie up more cash will that facilitate itself as well so every decision every action brings on a reaction and you want to make sure that reaction as it relates to your business is profitable and viable and maintains your business form and it's not only ourselves but for generations as well Sheryl made a comment about how it's so important that we have experts like Sheila here available to talk to us and share her passion for assisting our small business community so that they are prepared to file their taxes and put themselves in a better position as they move forward one thing if we are aspiring entrepreneurs or we are starting businesses it's critical that we have our personal credit taxes personal finances in order because as you begin your business you become the face of your business you are the credit for your business I mean when you start filling out forms to join the different organizations that can provide assistance the first thing they ask you for is your two years of file tax returns if you just started your business today you don't have the MBE if you have not filed to your tax returns you have to you don't have the credibility as if you filed those returns where you are able to provide documentation for your records so it's important that we live our dreams but it's also important that we recognize that we are our new business and until your business walk through that process probably two to three years your credit is going to be how you get from point A to point B and once your business is established as sustainable then the business credit becomes that but the two are always hand in hand thank you so much for this opportunity it is a lot of information I'm available and it's my pleasure to serve my community yes and I did have a question from Sherry regarding the Veterans Business Outreach Center Angela I don't know if you know have any information about that the quick okay Sherry do you want to share anything about you said you're a veteran and you're currently taking the boots to business entrepreneur course yes hi Aisha good afternoon yes I'm a retired veteran I'm in the process of starting my business I've taken several classes through the VBOC and I was just curious if you guys were a partner with them we're not but we will be awesome because yeah contact information Aisha did she say the VBOC the VBOC is a partner with SBA the Veterans Business Outreach Center we don't have one here in South Carolina but the one that's in Warner Robins Georgia service South Carolina right I was made aware of that and that's a bit to travel so I was curious if there's any type of resources here for people like me that you know are looking to get some assistance with getting started are you still in the military transition now no I retired I live currently in Blythewood I'm from Seattle originally so I'm just right now just getting started just getting taking courses I'm actually taking I just started a business plan course yeah I know Frank Anderson who works with SBA he's in the district office with me he does a boots to business transition veteran military from green to whatever he does that class I know he does on Fort Jackson and Shaw Jordan based Charleston and Buford right but any of our resources can assist you with start-up okay it doesn't have to be a veteran but we have Cheryl Sally who's on the line who is a resource partner that can help you with your start-up needs you don't necessarily have to be a VBOC but you can reach a VBOC and they can do everything like we're doing now okay that would be missed on the Benedict campus is that what you yes you sure hi and I just put the we are half start next week is it IHM we're starting a business planning bootcamp one oh please go ahead and register for that okay yep and we're going to go through the whole business plan and provide a workbook and so on and so forth to help you lay that vision out and be able to articulate it on paper and develop the steps the action steps but yeah we're here as is the other WBC's score and the small business development centers okay do you also work with veterans with this disability disabled veterans disabled veterans do you guys also service other programs for disabled veterans we do serve we service everybody right okay Angela can tell you more specific things about the services that come up on the federal level okay because you know you have the certifications so you get into the certifications but when we sit down one-on-one we can go through some of those wonderful thank you so much so before before we close I just want to just emphasize the business bootcamp the four week process the first week deals with concepts how your concepts actually flow into the business the second and the second week deals with marketing research understanding your competitors what are your strengths what are your weaknesses what are your opportunities what are your threats and then those two pieces are really the narrative part that the third week is all about the finances we have a score spreadsheet and I went through it it is amazing it will actually based on that information allow you to walk through that process to where you can complete not only a projection for the start of peace but a projection out out three to five years so that's going to be important and then the fourth week is about wrapping that all up the executive summary and the marketing piece so the goal will be that if you are walking through this process with the help of the workbook and the spreadsheet we can help you fill in pieces that you may not necessarily have today as well as provide you with the information step by step with how to complete the financial piece of your business plan and you should have a working business plan that is living day by day and you can update it as your business continues to grow okay thank you so much this sounds really exciting I'm looking forward to getting started with the program was that a question for me I think I just said your name Angela when we were talking about the veteran business outreach center okay alright do we have any final questions before we wrap it up this is Melissa I just want to encourage everyone when you're completing the survey that Ms. triggers is going to send out to you there's some other trainings that you all would like to see us do or if additional information that you think that you need as a business owner that we can assist you with please let us know please let us know if you need more direct assistance one-on-one assistance consultation with Ms. Sheila we do have a contract with her to work with her as part of our Cures Act funding to provide some of that technical assistance now there's some things that we cannot pay for such as her this is for you or anything like that but she can work with you and it's a limited number that we can you know refer to her to help you get your books in order and to make sure if you have some direct questions related to your business she can spend some time with you answering those questions for you I just wanted to put that out there because she is phenomenal and I'll be reaching out to you this year too just so you know yes you but thank you I think we all have a side hustle and my side hustle is becoming more reality to me that I can do more in that area if I'm organized and my documentation is in order and I'm more comfortable now than I've ever been before and moving forward I think that's probably a sentiment that a lot of you share as well so having your financial documentation in order especially as a business owner it does for you up to be more creative and to expand your business and think about partnerships awesome Matt just offer one suggestion if you are new to accounting and you're very new and you want to start quick books has a self-employment online service that you can purchase for $12.50 it's the very basic it's very simple and if you do it online and you have an accountant or me we can walk you through the process by just being on the computer so don't go out and get the big time desktop version until your business can sustain that self-employment the very first version is a good place for you to start and as you grow then you can actually you can upgrade to a more robust accounting piece but yeah quick books is a good place for you to start and it's geared for non-accountants that's my pitch for that is that the one last question is you're an attorney that you guys work with or partner with within this program for tax attorney Cheryl okay we partner with Nexham Pruitt Law Firm actually if you are a client with the women's business center there's a process what we can refer you and you give us permission to share and all of that and we can refer you to Nexham Pruitt and they will reach out to you you know pursuant to our referral and contact you and they provide those pro bono services we'll match you up with a participating attorney so we do have legal services for our WBC client at no cost to you you know for basic legal advice and things like that up to a certain number of hours this is amazing thank you so much Mrs. Sally I appreciate that you're welcome and I want to also encourage all of you to I know as business owners you have a network and you learn from each other so make sure you're sharing these free resources with your friends and colleagues and let them know that they do not have to pay large sums of money to a consultant when you have free resources that are probably more credible directly related to the agencies that you're trying to get funding from SBA you need to make sure that you're talking to these direct resources and the more you know the more empowered you become so keep in mind Ms. Sally she has staff members coming on board now for more of that direct 101 we're laying off referrals but we're about to you know get it back up and going again um no referrals laid off on this but but we are we're also here to help you and again we have funding available loans capital you know to help you with your businesses as well but you have to make sure your taxes are about you have to make sure that there are no liens against you um these are in most cases 82 percent of our loan portfolio their federal dollars so um all of our dollars have to make sense and we have to be accountable we hold our businesses accountable too but again take advantage of these resources they're resources guys and share this information this time has been I know well spent for me and I know for a lot of other business owners out out there you know take advantage take advantage information is power right you also miss you did a phenomenal job as always thank you thank you Angela question do you mind so um so basically I'm having some difficulty as well um with one of my nose I am fully qualified my business has been in existence since 2018 um I'm having some difficulty um with the EIDL um and my final review said but maybe you guys would know someone that I can personally speak to in reference to it because I've been approved for all other programs again I've been paying taxes since 2018 there really hasn't been any discrepancy so I don't know maybe um you guys would know um you know someone that I can speak to in in reference to that okay this is Melissa Angela can you help her with that since that is an SBA or connector with someone that can assist her with that program yes ma'am you say you're out of New York you're in New York right yes I am I am in New York but I'm also doing business like I said in South Carolina as well but I'm the business that I'm using currently predominantly is the um my New York real estate corporation and that's the one you request the EIDL one yes ma'am uh-huh this is 2018 uh-huh I know New York have several district offices give me just one second thank you so much and it may be where um you can connect if Angela um put the an email maybe you can connect offline but she can definitely connect yeah that's what I should have said you can just reach out to me offline it's someone from the New York district office because is it angela.brewer at sba.gov right we'll put it in the chat for you uh-huh thank you there you go okay I'm just going to screenshot it now yep and I'm like look at God it's like perfect timing because I was on the phone for like two three hours today I'm having a long day I'm driving got pulled over for a red light and I'm like oh but I'm like this this is it's crazy but I'm like God it's good because now look at how this was scheduled to happen and you got to discussing sba so I'm very very grateful everything happens for a reason absolutely and just like Melissa said take advantage of the as you know people there's this misnomer that free is not good but in this case it's good it's good okay it's not free because I'm not going to my horn but the WBC with the staff here with the other WBCs with the small business development center with score all of us and when I say all most of us I'm gonna say most majority of us I'm gonna say oh I won't do that blanket but the majority of us and I work with SBDC for over eight years and MBDA and I've owned several businesses so all of the consultants in this network and outside of the ones that are funded by the SBA we are we don't just read the books you know we're not coming from a place of theory but we're coming from a place of experience you know I have been out here since 1986 certified as a consultant since 94 have owned several businesses so most of the consultants that you will find in this network that provide this free service they've owned businesses they've sold businesses they've sold franchises they've been in manufacturing but more so they're retired out of these industries they're retired federal warranted procurement officers they're retired bankers and finance experts so I always tell clients go travel to each one of us you know travel around the circuit of business and biases and like Melissa says you know once you before you go to pay for our services okay to pay but get the knowledge tap into each one of us because you'll get a baseline you'll start to see some common common things common threads so you want to know before you go to pay for any service have full full knowledge of what you're paying for Miss Kelly Miss Kelly sorry to interrupt do we have to make an appointment with you individually or can we just walk into the you do you do have to make an appointment if you go to our website and I'm gonna put that bcwbc.org on the right side of the screen on our website you'll see a button that says request consultation and that into our database because we have to track everything we do so we can report it to the SBA and so every contact we made we made but that will get you into our database as does every business right so we're doing what we advise other businesses to do you have to have a database of everybody you touch I call it my touch marketing system every touch you make every day every day of the week needs to go into a database so that gets you into our database and then it's kind of automated you'll get an email and you'll get schedule you'll get you'll be assigned a counselor and then the schedule for initial consultation just like the doctor office okay awesome this is such a blessing it's such a blessing thank you ladies so much thank you yes thank you so much for your time we greatly greatly appreciated you know thank you now miss Asia I have to get back to taxes great that's good and I just really I'm gonna share for anyone on the call that is interested in being added to our listserv for our newsletter we share lots of upcoming events and information that's very important for our small business community so again Sheila we appreciate your time and your energy we know you love talking about taxes and now you can't wait to start working on them again we want to remind everyone that we start our business plan bootcamp next Thursday and I did put a link in the chat you can also go to our website at obo.columbiasd.gov and find more information about our office and upcoming events thank you to our partners Benedict College Wellness Business Center and United States Small Business Administration thank you Angela and Cheryl and thank you all for joining us today as an investment in your business and we appreciate your time and effort again you will see an email from me soon within the next hour so with a copy of the slides a survey link and a recording to this event so you hope everyone has a great rest of your day and take care let us know if there's anything else you can do for you thank you ladies thank you so amazing thank you guys