What? You want to start your own business? Why? part 2

It's very difficult to know how long a blog entry is until it's posted, so please forgive the overly long previous entry.  If you did make it all the way through to the end, then you know how I came to be in the position of needing more work and why I chose to create a seminar for small businesses.  I won't waste a lot of space going over the previous post.  The short of it, and I'm sure you want the short version, is that I have a lot of information I've either figured out the hard way or have discussed with others in business and I want to pass this on to anyone thinking of starting a small business or already in one and wanting to make certain they are going down the right path.

After my unscientific survey, which consisted of asking as many small business owners as I could about their interest in a seminar like this, I decided to proceed.  What was the first step?  First I needed to research the topics for my seminar.  I could not come up with two and a half hours of small business insights and knowledge on the spur of the moment.  Well, I guess I could but no one would want to pay me to listen to it.  I needed to be more organized and through.

I went to the web page of my favorite professional education vendor and looked over their course list.  In the past the normal course provided eight, sixteen or twenty-four hours of continuing credit which was fine.  In depth is the way to go with tax and accounting topics.  But this time I needed a lot of information about a lot of different topics and didn't have the time or the money to take ten or twelve eight hour courses.  Lucky for me, this year the educational group had come up with some short courses that covered all the topics I wanted to know more about.  Perfect!  I purchased and downloaded my classes and got to work.

I wanted to develop two things before I gave my first seminar, the first was a seminar manual which would go hand in hand with what I was going to talk about and the other was the actual seminar.  The manual would be provided in PDF format so that seminar participants could have it loaded on their computer, iPad, phone or other electronic reading device and be able to refer to it as I conducted the seminar.  The manual would have links to web pages of interest which could be accessed through the manual if the Internet was available.

This seemed to be going well and I was making good progress, then tax season hit.  I took a few months off from my preparation to get some work out and some money in.  Then it was back to work in June on the companion manual which is now almost finished.  I had visited a web page in which all the FAQs were presented in a question-answer format that I found to be easily understood and to present information that I needed without a lot of extra language I didn't want wade through.  I decided to structure the companion manual in that way making it easy to read and not filled with extra information.  Just the facts, ma'am.  The seminar is the place to get the facts filled out and plumped up with extra knowledge. 

Next blog entry will discuss finding a place to hold the seminar and advertising.  One proved easier than the other but both were new experiences for me. 

45 Days to Open Enrollment for ACA

It's only 45 days until open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act begins.  States, employers, employees, insured and uninsured are all waiting and wondering how this will work.  I wish I could give some idea about what will happen but I feel I'm not alone in not knowing anything about it.

Here's what I do know.  You can sign up now at www.healthcare.gov to set up an account so that you'll be ready to start shopping on October 1.  You can also sign up to receive email notifications as new information becomes available.

What does this mean for small businesses?  Most small businesses I know are exempt.  Employers must have 50 or more employees to be required to provide health insurance.  And that was recently moved back one year.  Small employers, that is businesses with 49 and fewer employees, may provide health insurance if they wish or have their employees buy insurance through the Marketplace exchanges.

Tennessee has chosen not to set up a state exchange or to modify Medicaid to accept low income individuals and families.  The Governor hasn't ruled out modifying Medicaid in the future, but as of right now, Medicaid in Tennessee won't be changing any rules to allow more low income people to apply for and receive insurance.  We'll have to wait and see what happens there.

This means that some low income individuals and families still won't be able to obtain insurance in Tennessee.  If an individual makes less than $11,500 ($23,840 for a family of 4) and is not eligible for Medicaid, then they can buy insurance on the Marketplace if they can afford it (I would assume that is doubtful) but they won't get any federal subsidies to pay for the premiums.  They will have to pay the full premium to receive insurance.  If you make too little to receive a subsidy for health insurance premiums but also don't quality for Medicaid, you won't have to pay a penalty for not having insurance.  You will be exempt from this penalty.  That's good news, I guess.

Another possibility for good news, I don't know if this will be true, is that people who were previously unable to obtain insurance because of preexisting conditions and had to pay very high premiums may now be able to buy insurance at a more affordable rate.  It still might be high, but might be lower than before.  We'll have to wait and see.

If an individual makes more than $11,500 ($23,840 for a family of 4) then they will receive a federal subsidy to buy health insurance and will have to pay a penalty if they don't buy any.

How much will this insurance actually cost?  No one knows.

Everything is is in a state of flux.  And just like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and all other Federal programs the state of flux is constant.  Hold on to your hats and tighten those seat belts.