Archive for January 15th, 2009
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Tax season can be a frustrating and confusing time for those with a spotty employment record and little spare cash. But people who were out of work in 2008 will still have to report to Uncle Sam.
“More people than ever before may be experiencing, for the first time, unemployment and the tax implications related to that,” said Mark Steber, vice president of tax resources at Jackson Hewitt.
For those taxpayers who were unemployed in 2008 and unsure about how to account for a brutal year, here are some answers:
Do I still have to pay tax if I was out of work in 2008?
Probably. The IRS requires anyone who received a W2 from their employer and made at least $8,950 (if you’re single and under 65 years old), or made at least $400 if you’re self employed, to file a tax return. If you’re anticipating a tax refund, you must file – even if you didn’t work at all.
But whether you will have a tax liability depends on a variety of factors, Steber said. “Every tax situation is unique, based on the facts and circumstances of the taxpayer.”
For example, if you only had unemployment compensation throughout the year, you may owe some tax on the checks you received. A severance package could also give you a tax bill, as could dividends and interest from investment income.
Other factors that weigh in include your tax deductions and other life changes associated with unemployment, like if you downsized your house or picked up supplemental income, Steber said.
Do I have to pay tax on my unemployment checks?
Yes. Unemployment compensation is taxable on federal and most state tax returns.
When applying for unemployment, you can choose whether you want federal and/or state income taxes automatically taken out of your unemployment benefits. If you choose to withhold, federal income taxes are withheld at a 10% rate, while the state rate varies. But since many cash-strapped Americans opt not to withhold – come April they may have to pay up.
So unless you previously elected to have taxes withheld throughout the year from your unemployment checks, a tax bill may be an unwelcome surprise when you file your 2008 return.
What if I took money from my 401(k)?
You may owe taxes if you took money out of a retirement plan or 401(k) to supplement your unemployment checks. That counts as income and is taxable too, said Joseph Perry, the partner in charge of Marcum & Kliegman’s tax department. And that might not be all you owe. The taxes are in addition to a 10% penalty on early withdrawals if you’re below the age of 59-1/2, he cautioned.
What if I did some supplemental work?
Freelance and project work can be a lifeline for unemployed workers between jobs. “Unemployed tend to become self-employed, that’s a natural outgrowth of being unemployed,” Steber said.
What if I had to relocate for a job?
If you accepted a new job that required relocating, you may also be able to deduct the moving expenses not reimbursed by your new employer. But there’s a catch, the new job site has to be 50 miles further than the old residence was from the old job, according to Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of taxation for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, which basically prevents you from trying to deduct a move within the same metropolitan area.
What if I spent a lot of money on job searches?
Those who were on the job hunt last year may get a gift from Uncle Sam: a slew of tax deductions. In fact, many of the expenses incurred while looking for a job can be deducted, which can result in some serious savings.
By declaring the following itemized deductions, taxpayers may lower the amount of taxable income they have for the year.
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TORONTO (Reuters) — Nortel Networks Corp., North America’s biggest telephone equipment maker, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, hoping to save a once high-flying business whose decade-long decline has accelerated with the global economic crisis.
The filing marks a crucial stage in the slow deterioration of one Canada’s most prominent companies. Nortel, a stock market darling before the tech bubble burst at the start of the decade and still one of the country’s largest employers, has struggled for years in an industry that has changed radically since its heyday in the late 1990s.
Despite its woes, Nortel is still a big part of Corporate Canada, with 32,000 employees and major operations in Ottawa, considered the country’s high-tech hub. Its payroll has also reflected its fortunes, shrinking from 90,000 in 2000.
A sharp slowdown in many of Nortel’s major markets, especially the United States, has exacerbated its problems, leading the company to warn last month that its business was under increased pressure and its cash position and liquidity were deteriorating.
“It’s obviously a remarkable transformation from where it was as the largest company in Canada worth about 35% of the (Toronto Stock Exchange) in 2000,” said Gavin Graham, director of investments at BMO Asset Management in Toronto.
“But this is a reflection of the way that the telecommunications industry has changed.”
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Yahoo Inc. announced Tuesday that it had hired veteran technology executive Carol Bartz as its new CEO.
Separately, Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) said President Sue Decker will resign after a transitional period.
Bartz ran software company Autodesk (ADSK) for 14 years, most recently serving as executive chairwoman. San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk, with just over 7,000 employees worldwide, is about half the size of Yahoo.
Bartz is taking over an embattled Yahoo. In mid-November, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down after failed attempts to improve the company’s performance.
Yang oversaw the company during a high-profile acquisition bid last year by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Fortune 500), as well as investor Carl Icahn’s failed attempt to replace the Yahoo board.
In a conference call Tuesday, Bartz acknowledged “the many problems” Yahoo is facing.
Bartz declined to discuss details of her plans for Yahoo. “But I can say my focus is on turning this company around and creating value for the shareholder,” she said.
The board approached Bartz in December, she said.
Bartz, calling herself “a straight shooter,” condemned “the external forces” that have battered Yahoo over the past year.
“Everybody on the outside was deciding what Yahoo should and shouldn’t do,” she said. “That’s going to stop.”
Yahoo will report fourth-quarter earnings Jan. 27, Bartz said. Shares fell 1% Tuesday to $12.10.
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| Apple CEO Steve Jobs |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday he will take a leave of absence from the computer and music-player maker because of health issues.
Jobs, who announced last week that he suffered from a hormone imbalance that caused him to lose weight, said he will be away from the job until the end of June.
“In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June,” Jobs said in a statement.
Jobs said curiosity over his personal health was a distraction and that his health-related issues have become “more complex” during the past week.
Tim Cook, the company’s chief operating officer, will be responsible for Apple’s day-to-day operations, according to the statement.
Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) shares fell 8% to $78.40 in after-hours trading. They were halted after closing down $2.38 to $85.33 in Wednesday regular-hours trading.
Jobs, a co-founder of Apple, returned as chief executive more than a decade ago and has become closely associated with the company’s overall identity.
Speculation about his health has been widespread for months, reaching a crescendo when it was announced he would not appear at Apple’s annual Macworld product showcase in San Francisco last week.
Jobs is the “soul of apple,” said Seyrafi. “But founders move on and Apple is a bit larger than Steve Jobs.”
Meanwhile, Apple is set to report fiscal first-quarter results next week. Analysts expect the company to report earnings of $1.39 per share, down 21% from earnings of $1.76 per share a year ago.
“Apple’s business is suffering,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research in San Francisco. “They haven’t had any home runs recently, and they’re suffering from macro conditions too,” he said.
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|
| Apple CEO Steve Jobs |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday he will take a leave of absence from the computer and music-player maker because of health issues.
Jobs, who announced last week that he suffered from a hormone imbalance that caused him to lose weight, said he will be away from the job until the end of June.
“In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June,” Jobs said in a statement.
Jobs said curiosity over his personal health was a distraction and that his health-related issues have become “more complex” during the past week.
Tim Cook, the company’s chief operating officer, will be responsible for Apple’s day-to-day operations, according to the statement.
Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) shares fell 8% to $78.40 in after-hours trading. They were halted after closing down $2.38 to $85.33 in Wednesday regular-hours trading.
Jobs, a co-founder of Apple, returned as chief executive more than a decade ago and has become closely associated with the company’s overall identity.
Speculation about his health has been widespread for months, reaching a crescendo when it was announced he would not appear at Apple’s annual Macworld product showcase in San Francisco last week.
Jobs is the “soul of apple,” said Seyrafi. “But founders move on and Apple is a bit larger than Steve Jobs.”
Meanwhile, Apple is set to report fiscal first-quarter results next week. Analysts expect the company to report earnings of $1.39 per share, down 21% from earnings of $1.76 per share a year ago.
“Apple’s business is suffering,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research in San Francisco. “They haven’t had any home runs recently, and they’re suffering from macro conditions too,” he said.
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YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let’s take a look at their most popular videos of all time.
I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1. But no, the most popular video of all time on YouTube, so far, has been Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply. It was added to YouTube on April 06, 2006 and has since gone on to attract 55.8 Million views. It’s had 60,476 comments, the first of which was: “That was freaking AWESOME! Thanks for sharing!!”. The comments for this video are still going strong today – the latest 10 comments have all come in the last 30 minutes, as of writing. Plus it’s been favorited 252,082 times (making it the number 1 Top Favorited video of All Time).
According to a SMH article at the end of 2006, Laipply is a comedian and motivational speaker from Cleveland, Ohio. The video shows him dancing a six-minute routine encompassing 32 songs spanning more than 50 years of music and dance. In many ways this is your typical YouTube video – a funny, goofy, short and clever video, in this case uploaded by and starring a professional comedian. But there are tens of thousands of similar videos on YouTube, uploaded by enthusiastic amateurs (mostly teens).
Incidentally, on Laipply’s website there is an accompanying cat video – proving once and for all that this success story was by and for the Web.
The next 3 most viewed YouTube videos are all music. Two of them professional, one amatuer.
2. Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend video, uploaded by RCARecords 5 months ago, has amassed 50 Million views.
3. My Chemical Romance’s Famous Last Words is third, with 35M views.
4. Guitar, is fourth with 26M views. It’s 5 minutes of Queen-like guitar licks, by some very talented dude.
Rounding out the Top 10:
5. SNL – Digital Short – A Special Christmas Box (comedy)
6. Tuğba Özay ve 250.000ci GarantiArkadas. com Üyesi (I have no idea what this is)
7. My Chemical Romance – Teenagers (music)
8. xxx (the title and promo image give the impression it is porn, but in fact it’s a sappy Hong Kong pop video)
9. Beyonce ft. Shakira – Beautiful Liar (mv) (music)
10. Akon – “Don’t Matter” (music)
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IBM U.S. Patent King For 16th Straight Year – IT Channel – IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
Posted on: January 15, 2009
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IBM (NYSE:IBM) upped its Chamberlain-esque pace of U.S. patents in 2008, earning a record 4,186 to increase its string as No. 1 patent holder to 16 consecutive years, the company announced Wednesday. The computing giant beat out No. 2 Samsung by a comfortable 671 patents, whileCanon (NYSE: CAJ) (2,114 U.S. patents), Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) (2,030) and Intel (NSDQ:INTC) (1,776) rounded out the top five.
While IBM managed to earn an average of 11.5 technical patents per day in 2008 — or slightly more than one for every 100 people the company employs — Big Blue said Wednesday it will greatly increase the number of inventions it makes openly available in 2009 rather than seek to protect as intellectual property.
Be that as it may, the company couldn’t resist a little gloating in Wednesday’s patent announcement: “IBM’s 2008 patent issuances are nearly triple Hewlett-Packard’s and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google — combined.”
HP (NYSE:HPQ), which in 2006 passed IBM as the largest high-tech company in the world in terms of sales, finished 10th on the 2008 U.S. patent list with 1,424. HP has been concentrating on “the quality of the patents that we seek, as opposed to the quantity,” an HP intellectual property lawyer told News.com.
2008 U.S. Patent Leaders
1. IBM — 4,186
2. Samsung — 3,515
3. Canon — 2,114
4. Microsoft — 2,030
5. Intel — 1,776
6. Panasonic — 1,745
7. Toshiba — 1,609
8. Fujitsu — 1,494
9. Sony — 1,485
10. HP — 1,424
Source: IFI Patent Intelligence
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IBM U.S. Patent King For 16th Straight Year – IT Channel – IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
Posted on: January 15, 2009
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IBM (NYSE:IBM) upped its Chamberlain-esque pace of U.S. patents in 2008, earning a record 4,186 to increase its string as No. 1 patent holder to 16 consecutive years, the company announced Wednesday. The computing giant beat out No. 2 Samsung by a comfortable 671 patents, whileCanon (NYSE: CAJ) (2,114 U.S. patents), Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) (2,030) and Intel (NSDQ:INTC) (1,776) rounded out the top five.
While IBM managed to earn an average of 11.5 technical patents per day in 2008 — or slightly more than one for every 100 people the company employs — Big Blue said Wednesday it will greatly increase the number of inventions it makes openly available in 2009 rather than seek to protect as intellectual property.
Be that as it may, the company couldn’t resist a little gloating in Wednesday’s patent announcement: “IBM’s 2008 patent issuances are nearly triple Hewlett-Packard’s and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google — combined.”
HP (NYSE:HPQ), which in 2006 passed IBM as the largest high-tech company in the world in terms of sales, finished 10th on the 2008 U.S. patent list with 1,424. HP has been concentrating on “the quality of the patents that we seek, as opposed to the quantity,” an HP intellectual property lawyer told News.com.
2008 U.S. Patent Leaders
1. IBM — 4,186
2. Samsung — 3,515
3. Canon — 2,114
4. Microsoft — 2,030
5. Intel — 1,776
6. Panasonic — 1,745
7. Toshiba — 1,609
8. Fujitsu — 1,494
9. Sony — 1,485
10. HP — 1,424
Source: IFI Patent Intelligence
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Daily Tidbits: China’s Web users match total U.S. citizens | Webware – CNET
Posted on: January 15, 2009
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The total number of online Chinese citizens has grown to approximately 298 million, reports the BBC. According to the report, which cites data from the China Internet Network Information Center, there has been a significant increase in the number of people who use mobile phones accessing the Web, which led to a 41.9 percent increase in China’s Internet population year over year. Although there are almost as many people on the Web in China as there are U.S. residents, the country has a long way to go to match Web penetration rates measured in other countries: Web penetration in China is just 22.6 percent.
The 111th U.S. Congress welcomed YouTube viewers to its page on the popular video site earlier this week. In the short, two-minute video, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other prominent politicians informed viewers that individual representatives will start posting videos on YouTube, as well as other important information of use to citizens. The YouTube channel also includes a Google Maps integration, which allows visitors to search for a specific representative and find their individual videos.
Virtual world, Meez, announced Wednesday that it has merged with Pulse Entertainment, a company that specializes in mobile messaging and entertainment. Although Pulse will cease to exist, Meez plans to integrate the company’s messaging platform into its virtual world and continue servicing existing Pulse customers.
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ReadWriteWeb – Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking & Social Media
Posted on: January 15, 2009
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A number of Google services just announced that they are about to shut down. The Google Video team announced that it will shut down uploads in a few months, while the Google Notebook team announced that it is stopping development (the service will continue to function, however). According to Danny Sullivan, Google is also closing Jaiku, a Twitter-like micro-blogging service that was bought by Google before it even launched, but which has lingered in invite-only mode ever since. Google Catalog search, which made shopping catalogs searchable, will also be closed soon.
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