Remember........"You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want." -Zig Ziglar.

Email: bmsarasota@comcast.net 941-387-0926; 432-367-3465

Disclaimer and Warning - From Bob Parrish CPA, P.C.

Business and Investing Journal Newsletters & Journals Listings

This newsletter will keep you informed of the recent trends and techniques for professionals, managers, investors, and wage earners. Distribution methods will include facsimile, email, and posting the Bob Parrish CPA, P.C.'s web site. In the near future, we intend to provide an audio version posted to the website, that you may use while attending to normal routines. If you have a need for an audio CD, please inform us, so that we will have information about the usefulness to our clients of an audio only production.

In each journal I will attempt to include recent and relevant topic regarding:

Tax Notes
Scam Alerts
Investment Notes
Management Notes
Personnel Notes
Navigation of this site

If any relevant topic is noticed it will be added as a miscellaneous section. Time permitting I will include special coverage of topics in between issues.

Tax Notes

The tax notes section includes current topics to protect your hard earned money from being eroded by taxes.

Aid for Tsunami Victims May be Tax Deductible

Contributions to domestic, tax-exempt, charitable organizations that provide assistance to individuals in foreign lands qualify as tax-deductible contributions for federal income tax purposes provided the U.S. organization has full control and discretion over the uses of such funds.

Contributions are deductible for the year in which they are actually made.

Some words of caution: If your Income (specifically, Adjusted Gross Income) exceeds $142,700 the tax deductible amount for Itemized Deductions is limited - therefore, you probably will not receive any tax benefit for the charitable donation.

New For 2004

Some recent tax law changes are effective for the 2004 Tax Year. We are aware of the changes and will discuss with you those items, and request the information on the Tax Fact Organizers we have furnished to you.

Educators’ Deduction

Clean Fuel Vehicle Deduction

Child Tax Credit & Child Tax Credit - 2

Combat Pay

Sales Tax Deduction

Expense Limit for SUVs

Sale of Personal Residence Acquired in a Like-kind Exchange

Deduction for Discrimination Suit Costs

"You may have to pay a penalty of up to $10,000 (more in some cases) if you are required to file Form TD F 90-22.1 (for foreign accounts and trusts), but do not do so." This is not my language - this is a quotation from the IRS Instructions for the IRS form to report interest and dividend income.

Scam Alerts

Scam alerts notify you of widespread scams, and help to make your business and personal finances more secure through knowledge of these problems.

Charities May be Looking for Prey and Not For Prayer

We can all be assured of one thing - if you have money, someone else wants it!

What to be Sensitive to For Scam Charities

The mail and phone calls are often used in many scams seeking donations for everything from cancer, to helping disabled veterans, to aiding injured animals, to feeding orphans in Africa, to lobbying Congress about Social Security. A typical tactic is to take a current news event such as a natural disaster - such as the recent Tsunami, or the Florida Hurricanes, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks and claim to be collecting to help people that were affected.

Ask for the name of the charity if the telemarketer does not provide it promptly;
Ask what percentage of your donation will support the cause described in the solicitation;
Verify that the charity has authorized the solicitation;
Do not provide any credit card or bank information until you have reviewed all of the information from the charity and made the decision to donate;
Ask for a receipt showing the amount of the contribution and stating that it is tax- deductible; and
Avoid cash gifts. For security and tax record purposes, it is best to pay by check – made payable to the beneficiary, not the solicitor.

Furthermore -

If you’re approached by an unfamiliar charity, check it out. Most states require charities to register with them and file annual reports showing how they use donations. Ask your state or local consumer protection agency how to get this information. The Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance also offers information about national charities.
Be cautious about emails seeking charitable contributions. Many unsolicited email messages are fraudulent.
Beware of sound-alikes. Some crooks try to fool people by using names that are very similar to those of well-known charities.
Ask how donations are used. One of the most important things to consider is how much of your money goes to fundraising and administrative costs, rather than to the charitable work itself.
Be wary of requests to support police or firefighters. Some fraudulent fundraisers claim that donations will benefit police or firefighters, when in fact little or no money goes to them. Contact your local police or fire department to find out if the claims are true and what percentage of donations, if any, they will receive.
Be especially cautious when there are natural or other disasters. Fraudulent charities take advantage of those situations to trick people who want to help the victims. If you’re not sure whether a charity is legitimate, check it out with your state charities regulator and the BBB before you donate.

There are a few sources of information on the web, which may be helpful to you if you desire to make the additional efforts in the research.

The U.S.A. Federal Trade Commission - www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/misc/charitycheck.htm
Guidestar - http://www.guidestar.org

Bank Scams

There are currently several scams that ask a bank customer to verify banking information. Some are using the internet to contact customers, and some are using the telephone to contact customers. Those using the internet have made web pages that look exactly like the bank's page and the language used to entice the customer is excellent. Also included are suppliers and service providers. The scam will appear it comes from VISA, AOL, or other merchant and asks you to verify banking information. Bank of America, Bank One, Citibank are among those names being used.

Language such as NOTICE!, Bank Security Upgrade, Verify Your Account, FDIC Account Alert, will be used.

DO NOT GIVE ANYONE SOLICITING BANKING INFORMATION YOUR BANKING INFORMATION.

Investment Notes

Investments notes provides some of the new strategies - and discuss "tried & true" strategies by using financial knowledge to meet your life objectives.

Bob Parrish's World Class Investment Advisory Service provides:

The Convenience Of Our Professional Asset Management Service Based On Two Nobel Prize Winning Formulae OR
The Freedom To Make Your Investment Decisions With The Aid Of A Professional Investment Advisor

Modern Portfolio theory: Professor Markowitz’s Modern Portfolio Theory Is Grounded In The Study Of The Past Movements Of Different Assets…Recognizing Two Important Truisms:

1. That History Tends To Repeat

2. Not All Assets Go Up And Down In Tandem
Professor Sharpe’s Capital Asset Pricing Model Discovered New Ways To Compare The Risk And Return Potential Of Different Portfolio Allocations

At the risk of creating fear and confusion - I would like to mention some of the work we perform for clients using our Asset Allocation services:

Not all assets move in tandem: It is crucial to mix investments so the movements will not be associated, or will be opposite from one another. The entire stability of the portfolio is affected by the mix of the individual elements. Using our services offers you more than Asset Class diversification, we include Asset Sector diversification and mathematical tools to analyze the Asset Allocation. Moreover, at your need or request I can offer to you charts of the individual elements of the design that can include more than a graphing of the values. We can include 200 Day Moving averages, Stochastic Charts and other more complex models. Should you decide to use Options as a strategy we can show you how and implement for you such strategies that offer a limit to the downside of an investment, offer you the opportunity or profit from a trade - regardless of the direction of movement, and other strategies that most professionals are not familiar with. Call me for learning about these tools. I know them and understand them. Moreover, I will inform you of the risks, inform you when I do not believe it suitable for you and show the opportunities when it is suitable for you.

I will advise and discuss with you the unemotional discipline of rebalancing the portfolio on a routine interval.

Knowing how all the elements of your portfolio react to outside stimuli is crucial to analyzing the stability of your portfolio.

Portfolio Stability and Risk: As a financial planner and asset allocation adviser, I will determine the standard deviation of your portfolio and create a design for you that will use historical data to know whether the design will meet your personal risk profile.

Portfolio Rebalancing Along With Asset Allocation: As your Asset Allocation Adviser, I will rebalance and/or work together with you as an adviser, to routinely and unemotionally rebalance your portfolio.

Call Me For A Discussion - So That I May Introduce You To How I Will Make Available To You The Opportunities and Possibilities of This Modern Portfolio Theory.

Management Notes

Whether managing a small business or a larger business, current and meaningful topics are covered in this section. You will find topics of finances, controlling your business, and modern management techniques covered herein.

Although most CPA's will operate on historical reporting I can assist you with future operating results !

Call me to analyze your financial statements to produce for you (on selected accounts or all accounts) a mathematical analysis of your financial history.

I will make a statistical analysis that will determine with a 95% probability what the range of income or expense items will be on a monthly, or if sufficient detail is used, an annual time interval.

For example: Within a 95% probability, your monthly income will be between $100,000 and $172,000. This will allow you to plan for expenses. Moreover, if the income is not within that range, you will suspect something unusual has occurred and needs investigation.

As a manager this will help you to better understand your business operations, and plan for the future.

If you are applying for a large loan, and the loan officer would like for me to produce the forecast, I will be please to make the computations for you.

Personnel Notes

Personnel management is a subject in itself. In this section you will find helpful hints for daily management, defensive hiring and firing, and required documents for the personnel records.

We can assist you to be more confident your personnel records should always be up to date.

This is a good time to:

Be certain all W-4 forms are in the personnel file and current
Be certain the I-9 form is included
Employment applications should be in the personnel record

We can maintain the files for you and/or produce computer images for permanent retention, without the headaches of the paperwork. Furthermore, we can assign a special username, and secret password for you so that you may access the computer located in our office. Using that username and password you may download the archived computer images and read them at any time of day or night 7 days a week. (Subject to short intervals of maintenance, storm outages, or other

Very truly yours,

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