I was talking to local car dealer yesterday and his experience is mirrored by dealers across the country. They have sold dozens of autos through the “Cash for Clunkers” program…the government program owes them between $100,000 and $200,000 and they have, to date, only been paid for ONE transaction.

So the promise of “free government money” sounded good. The car dealers jumped on it with abandon, but they are facing some serious cash flow issues while they wait for payment.

When the government is the one paying you, they take their own sweet time and do things their way…

It’s like government health plans designed to save money on Medicaid… doctors found they didn’t pay well in the first place, paid late most of the time while medical offices had bills to pay NOW, and sometimes didn’t pay at all and these HMO’s went bankrupt.

Looking for that “Free Government Money”? While some “free government money” may be viable options for you… most may be more trouble than they’re worth.

photo credit: Hey Paul

Business Week:

Missing from Washington’s health-reform discussion is a simple change that would make insurance more affordable for millions of the nation’s smallest business owners by letting them fully deduct the cost of their health insurance premiums.

By a quirk in the tax code, self-employed workers who buy their own health insurance essentially pay an extra tax on their premiums. They’re the only taxpayers in the system who pay taxes on premiums, which count as a business expense for corporations and pretax income for employees. Because self-employed workers have no corporate employers to match their payroll tax contributions to Social Security and Medicare, they pay double the rate of wage and salary workers in a levy known as the self-employment tax equal to 15.3% of their net earnings. That’s on top of regular state and federal income taxes, and the income they spend on health premiums is not exempt.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Al’s Morning Meeting:

The U.S. Patent Office is sitting on a mountain of applications that would take at least six years to clear, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found in a two-part investigation.

The newspaper points out that a patent could be the key that protects an upstart company or idea. It could ignite the economy, but the backlog of applications means an inventor can wait at least three and a half years to get action.

The Journal Sentinel contends the Patent Office’s practice of publishing detailed applications on its Web site 18 months after the inventor files them — regardless of whether the office has begun to examined them — invites competitors anywhere in the world to steal ideas.

“For more than a dozen years starting in 1992, Congress siphoned off a total of $752 million in fees from the Patent Office to pay for unrelated federal projects, decimating the agency’s ability to hire and train new examiners.

“Staff turnover has become epidemic. Experts say it takes at least three years for a patent examiner to gain competence, and yet one examiner has been quitting on average for every two the agency hires.

“In many cases, applications languish so long that the technology they seek to protect becomes obsolete, or a product loses the interest of investors who could give it a chance at commercial success. ‘Patents are becoming commercially irrelevant to product life cycles,’ said John White, a patent attorney and former examiner.”

Photo by USPTO.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: macroninja

I recently came across an article listing U.S. economic trends that had no chance of lasting forever in this economy. The article argues that the current recession and economic downturn is causing the need for realignment between our U.S. Government and private sector’s. It is no shock that with the way the economy has been that there would be some drastic changes even in thing’s we never thought would fall. Below is a short list of the 8 U.S. economic trends that couldn’t last forever.

• Home Ownership levels.
• Low energy prices.
• Trade deficit levels.
• Consumer Savings.
• Consumer spending.

For the complete list of U.S. economic trends that are falling and a description about each one, please visit Small Business Labs.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Recent efforts to help small businesses haven’t mirrored those implemented in the aftermath of 9/11, but new measures from the stimulus have been productive.

Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan includes incentives for banks to make more loans backed by the Small Business Administration. The program temporarily reduces fees associated with those loans and ups the loan guarantees to 90%.

The plan also calls for a new initiative known as “America’s Recovery Capital,” which allows viable small businesses to receive interest-free loans of up to $35,000 to pay down existing debts.

But lending activity remains down, primarily because banks still see small business loans as a huge risk.

(According to one analyst’s report, their 2008 failure rate hit almost 12%, compared to 2.4% in 2004.) Banks also hesitate before making SBA-guaranteed loans because they cost a great deal to administer — regardless of the loan amount — and because the agency can back out of these guarantees even after banks make the loans.

Photo by edopter.com.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

If that’s such a crucial issue to the safety of the American populace, where is the FTC when it comes to cracking down on the TV networks, radio networks, and newspaper chains who report on the “Cash for Clunkers” program without disclosing the millions of dollars of advertising revenue they receive from car dealerships who are promoting the “Cash for Clunkers” program wildly? Media watchdogs note that the major TV networks routinely praise the “Cash for Clunkers” program without mentioning it’s downsides.

What’s the difference between a compensated blogger making $5000 and media conglomerates making untold millions? Lawyers and lobbyists – that’s all.

If bloggers should disclose even the remotest compensation, under this same logic, the Federal Trade Commission should immediately SHUT DOWN and impose crippling fines on every media outlet that has taken advertising revenue in any fashion from the auto industry and reported on the “Cash for Clunkers” program without disclosing this financial interest in the program.

It’s that simple.

A beer summit at the White House might be just what premium brewers needed to lift sales for the rest of the summer.

Sales for the $90 billion beer business are soft so far this summer — traditionally the time when most beer is sold. Analysts split the blame between the weak economy and rainier-than-normal weather in parts of the country.

Beer sales were flat for the four weeks ended July 11 and including the lead-up to July 4, according to Nielsen and JPMorgan.

But President Obama’s offer to unite Massachusetts police officer Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at the White House last week to reconcile an arrest and race issue put beer in the spotlight. “Regardless of the beer picks, it’s been great buzz for the beer industry,” says Julian Green, MillerCoors spokesman. “It puts beer top of mind.”

Anheuser-Busch was center stage at the meeting with Bud Light and MillerCoors with its Belgian-style Blue Moon brew. Sam Adams Light made it on the menu because of a letter to the White House from Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who pushed to have American brews at the table.

Photo by White House.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Every inventor must realize that once an invention is used publicly or an attempt is made to sell it, a patent for said invention must be filed within one year or the rights will be lost.

This is good news because it gives inventors a year to test market an invention before spending money on a patent.

However, it also opens the door to disputing with regard to who was the first to invent.

Having a successful invention most definitely means that you will have to deal with imitators.

In this case you will have to spend time and money proving you invented first, and without excellent records, proving this may be impossible.

The one year limitation also shows how patents are perishable. There is a point in a patent’s lifetime when it is the most valuable, and a point where it becomes worthless.

Those knowledgeable in business take advantage of the patent’s lifetime.

One must consider whether it makes better business sense to fund a patent or spend money building market share.

After all, branding provides a much stronger competitive advantage than a patent does.

Continue Reading: “To Patent Or Not To Patent”

Photo by USPTO.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Amid tumbling banks and bankrupt companies, small businesses may have cause for celebration.

The Senate reauthorized the Small Business Administration’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. In the House, Congressman David Wu (D-OR) shepherded the bill through, with a resounding 386-41 vote.

The bill will now head to the conference committee, where differences between the House and Senate bills will get ironed out, says Edsel Brown, assistant director for the Office of Technology at SBA.

Congress has until the July 31to conference the bill. If the revision passes, this legislation will reauthorize the programs for eight years as well as add some much necessary fixes. One major adjustment includes allowing small businesses backed by venture capitalists to participate in the programs.

“The fact that we can move forward provides stability to the programs and gives small businesses an experienced program,” says Brown, “not only for themselves but to move America forward in terms of innovation.”

The SBIR program was established by Congress in 1982, while the STTR came later in 1992, to aid the government in research and innovation. Today, federal agencies with an extramural research and development budget of more than $100 million allocate 2.5 percent of their dollars to the SBIR program, while agencies with more than $1 billion must donate an additional 0.3 percent to the STTR program.

With 11 different agencies, the SBA on average receives $2 billion annually for SBIR and $200 million for STTR programs.

Photo by BlankBlankBlank.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.