This was a question posed to me by a recent reader:

Hi Jim,
I see that you’ve written a lot about sep-ira’s and I had a question I hoped you could answer, I was going to make a contribution to my sep-ira, can I deduct that on my taxes?

Thanks,

The answer is yes but where you deduct it will depend on your situation.

Self-Employed Persons
If you are self-employed, you can contribute to an SEP-IRA as either an employer or an employee. When you contribute to the SEP-IRA as an employer, you can deduct that contribution but you deduct it from your business/self-employment income. If you contribute to the SEP-IRA as an employee, you can deduct that contribution from your own income.

Not Self-Employed Persons
If you work for a business that offers a SEP-IRA, you’re going to be contributing as an employee and subject to the rules of a Traditional IRA. So, again you will be able to deduct the contribution but you will be deducting it against your own income.

So to recap, if you are a self employed and contributing as an employer, you deduct it against your business’ income (you are still subject to self employment tax). If you are self-employed and contributing as an employee or you are not self-employed, you deduct it from your own taxes.

Anyone want to add anything? (or fix something I may have gotten wrong?)

PayPal is offering (it’s supposed to start in 2007 but you can’t get one yet) these slick new SecureID tags that will definitely help improve security in PayPal accounts. The idea behind SecureID is that it will display a six digit number that changes every thirty seconds and that number will be required every single time you log into your account. Why is this more secure? Well security comes down to three things - what you know, what you have, and who you are. Your user name and password satisfy the ‘what you know’ part and the key will satisfy the ‘what you have’ part.

This will protect you against phishing because even if thieves find out your user name and password, without the SecureID code they cannot access your account.

The key is only $5.00 but it’s absolutely free for Business accounts!

PayPal Security Key Site (thanks Consumerist!)

I was a little bored one day and thought I’d try to find fifty fun facts about credit cards that I didn’t know before hand and put them all in once place for you all to munch on and enjoy over the weekend. Some of the things I already knew, like the AMEX Centurion card has a $2500 annual fee and a $250,000 annual spend requirement, but others I didn’t, like how American Express started off as a shipping company and later branched out into financial services.

I broke the fun facts into these general categories: Historical Nuggets (with subcategories for each major card company), Useful Things That Make You Go Hmmmm…, Technobabbliciousness, Legal Ways You’ve Been Hosed & Un-Hosed, and Department of Holy Crap They Make A Ton of $$$$$. Historical Nuggets obviously covers the history of cards and the various companies. The Useful Things That Make You Go Hmmmm… covers some useful consumer information that may one day come in handy in your daily life. Technobabbliciousness covers some interesting facts about the technology behind credit cards. Legal Ways You’ve Been Hosed & Un-Hosed covers various court rulings and other legalese that explain why the environment is the way it is (like ridiculous fees and interest rates!). Finally, Department of Holy Crap They Make A Ton of $$$$$ is just a collection of mind-boggling statistics that should make you think twice about starting your own credit card company.

Historical Nuggets

1. In the beginning, credit cards were just charge accounts, offered by individual stores and only usable at those stores. The first credit card that could be used at multiple locations was offered by The Diner’s Club in 1950. (full story)
2. Diners Club issued that first card to only two hundred customers and it could only be used at twenty seven restaurants in New York City.

American Express History

3. American Express started off as a shipping company in 1850, shipping products across the United States and capitalizing on the limited reach and slow speed of the United States Postal Service. Their main customers were banks and they shipped various financial instruments like stock certificates and other notes. They began selling money orders and traveler’s checks in 1882 and issued its first credit card in 1958. (full history)
4. In 1984, American Express billed their Platinum Card as extremely exclusive and it had an annual fee of $250 ($484.84 in 2006 dollars). Today, the extremely exclusive card for American Express is their black Centurion card with a $2,500 annual fee! (and requirement to spend $250,000 a year)

MasterCard & Visa History

5. MasterCard and Visa are networks of banks and financial institutions. American Express is its own company and Discover Card is a subsidiary Morgan Stanley (who is spinning off the business).
6. Visa was originally called BankAmericard, a card offered by Bank of America in 1958 in California. By 1970, they had created an association, called the National BankAmericard, Inc., of all the US Banks that issued the BankAmericard. It wasn’t renamed to Visa until 1976. (full history)
7. Visa actually stands Visa International Service Association.
8. The Visa logo colors were chosen because the blue represented the sky and the gold represented color of the hills in California where Bank of America was founded. (from Wikipedia).
9. Originally formed under the name Interbank Card Association and they acquired the MasterCharge brand and logo in 1969. MasterCharge was originally formed by four California banks in 1967, who joined together to form the Western States Bankcard Association to battle the BankAmericard of Bank of America. MasterCharge was renamed MasterCard in 1979.
10. In 1984, MasterCard was the first to use a hologram on its cards to deter fraud.

Discover Card History

11. Discover Card was introduced by Sears in 1985 and gained notoriety because it charged no annual fee.
12. At the time, Sears also owned the brokerage Dean Witter Reynolds Organization and the Discover brand was integrated into that organization. When Dean Witter merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997, Discover went along for the ride.

Useful Things That Make You Go Hmmmm…

13. Wonder why minimum payments are so low? It allows consumer to carry more debt while keeping to the same low minimum payment. You can give someone with the ability to pay $100 per month a credit limit as high as $5,000 if they only had to pay 2% a month. If the minimum payment were 5%, they could only have a credit limit of $2,000. The lower the minimum payment, the deeper in debt someone could be in.
14. It is against the merchant agreements of MC, Visa, and AMEX, for a vendor to require you to provide your phone number, home address, or other personal information for credit card transactions. In fact, some states make it illegal for them to require it. (It’s not illegal to ask, but it is if they refuse to process the transaction without that information)
15. Under the merchant agreements of MC, Visa, Discover Card and AMEX, you do not need to present a driver’s license in order to complete a credit card transaction.
16. Under the merchant agreements of MC, Visa, and Discover Card, vendors may not require a minimum purchase amount. Under AMEX, it’s more of a hint that the vendor shouldn’t put up any barriers to use but AMEX also has a discrimination rule, so if there is no minimum amount for MC/Visa, there cannot be a minimum amount for AMEX. (Consumerist has all the relevant merchant agreements consolidated)
17. Under the merchant agreements of MC, Visa, and Discover Card, vendors may not charge a surcharge for using the card (the anti-discrimination rules still apply for AMEX). In some states, it is actually illegal to charge a surcharge for credit card purchases. This rule does not apply to government agencies.
18. On the flip side, offering a discount for cash payment (over credit card payment) is permitted by all of the card companies (looooophole!).
19. A merchant may, on taking a personal check, require that you offer a credit card number. It is against merchant agreements to charge a credit card in the event of a bounced check (and it’s also very dangerous to have all that juicy information on one little slip of paper, plus this may also be illegal in your state).
20. You can lower your interest rate with a phone call. Credit card companies are like cell phone and cable companies, they’re afraid you’ll leave and join with one of their competitors. Use this to your advantage by comparing offers from other credit cards and bringing this information to your credit company.
21. When you use your card, you agree to the cardholder agreement, you don’t have to sign anything. If you get an update to the agreement, you also agree to the updates once you use your card.
22. A fixed interest rate on a credit card can change with only 15 days of notice. Fixed is not fixed in the sense that a mortgage loan is fixed, it’s fixed in the sense that the credit card company can change it with only 15 days notice!
23. If you have multiple balances with different interest rates on one card, payments are generally applied to the balance with the lower interest rate. You will have no choice in the matter and you cannot request it be made to the higher balance. So if you have a $100 balance at 19.99% and a $5,000 balance at 4.99%, your payments apply to the $5,000 at 4.99% first. A note about this will be in your agreement.
24. The credit card sale process works as follows: The vendor sends an authorization request for the value of the sale. The credit card company checks the card limit and reduces the credit limit by that amount (it puts a “hold” or a “block”) and sends the vendor electronic confirmation that the card is good. The vendor sends a deposit transaction or a sale transaction. The credit card company sends the money. This process is usually quick and painless… with the following exceptions:
25. Hotels and rental car agencies usually send an authorization request for the estimated cost of your stay or rental and they keep this “block” on your card for 10 to 15 days (independent of how long you actually stay there) even if you pay with something else.
26. When you use a credit card at a gas pump, the pump authorizes the purchase for something in the neighborhood of $50 first. So if you have less than $50 left on your limit, the pump will reject your purchase attempt.
27. Restaurants typically will authorize a credit card purchase for the amount of the bill plus 25% (for gratuity), so again, if your limit can’t handle the extra 25%, the purchase transaction will be rejected.

Technobabbliciousness

28. Ever notice all your credit cards are of uniform shape and size? Their dimensions are governed by the ISO 7810 standard, an international standard for identification cards. Banking cards, as well as driver’s licenses and retail cards, follow ID-1 (passports follow ID-3). If your card has a smart chip, it follows ISO 7816, and if it has RFID, it follows ISO 14443.
29. The expiration date on the card is “fake.” You can still use the card after its expiration date because the card number on your replacement will be the same. The reason why cards do expire varies from company to company but mostly it’s because the credit cards take a lot of abuse and just need replacing (they estimate the magnetic strip is good for only about three or four years of swiping).
30. Interested to know what’s on the magnetic stripe? Check out this breakdown of the three tracks on Wikipedia (the rest of the page explains other magnetic stripes).
31. There are generally two types of magnetic strips, high-coercivity and low-coercivity, with the high-coercivity being stronger and more durable (also requiring more expensive equipment to handle). (from Wikipedia)
32. Higher-coercivity are usually black and low-coercivity strips are a dark brown, but there are special cases such as American Express’ patented silver colored magnetic strip.
33. Hotel keys and other low-coercivity stripped cards are susceptible to being scrambled by a weak magnetic force, including cell phones.
34. Credit card numbers conform to the Luhn algorithm, which is just a simple checksum test on the number. What you do is start from the right and double each second digit (1111 becomes 2121), then add them all together, and you should end with a number evenly divisible by ten. If it doesn’t, it’s not a valid credit card number.
35. The first digit of the number is the Major Industry Identifier. 1/2 are for airlines, 3 is for travel/entertainment, 4/5 for banking and financial, 6 for merchandizing and financial, 7 for petroleum, 8 for telecommunications. 0 and 9 are for other assignments but you’ll likely never see them. If you look at an American Express card, you’ll see it starts with a 3, a throwback to their travel/entertainment roots.
36. The first six digits will correspond to the issuer, including the major industry identifier. 34xxxx/37xxxx are for American Express, 4xxxxx is for Visa, 51-55xxxx is for MasterCard, and 6011xx is for Discover.
37. The rest of the digits (except the last one, which is a checksum digit) is your account number.

Legal Ways You’ve Been Hosed & Un-Hosed

38. Minors, those under the age of 18, are not obligated to pay back any charges to their credit cards (unless a parent co-signs, but then its the parent who is on the hook) because they are not allowed to enter into a binding contract.
39. If there are unauthorized charges on your card, you’re on the hook for $50 each, maximum (unless your agreement says you are responsible for less, you cannot be responsible for more). If you report your card missing and an unauthorized charge appears after you’ve reported it, you are liable for $0.
40. By law, you are only allowed to dispute charges for “unsatisfactory goods or services” if you made the purchase in your home state or within 100 miles of your billing address and the purchase was for more than $50. (and if you’ve made a good faith attempt to resolve it with the vendor) While a credit card company may not hold you to this, they are protected by the law for purchases outside your home state/100 mile radius.
41. Credit card companies are prohibited by law from sending you a card that you didn’t ask for, unless it’s a renewal or a substitute card. If you get a credit card you didn’t apply for, contact the Federal Trade Commission and file a complaint.
42. A common clause in most user/member agreements is that the cardholder waives their right to sue the credit card company. The cardholder must instead go through a binding arbitration hearing with the credit card company and cannot take the company to court or participate in a class action suit.
43. Before 1996 and the Supreme Court case Smiley vs. Citibank (517 U.S. 735, Thanks j), there were restrictions on how much a credit card company could charge for a late payment. The ruling in Smiley vs. Citibank lifted that restriction and fees that were once around $5-$10 jumped to $30 or more today.
44. There is no federal law regulating the rate of interest a credit card company can charge! The federal government use to regulate but repealed those laws during the Great Depression and never put them back in place, they now rely on the states to handle usury.
45. In the Supreme Court case Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp (439 U.S. 299, Thanks j) in 1978, the Court decided that national banks only need to follow the usury laws of the state they are headquartered in, not the state in which their customer resides.
46. Credit card companies are all headquartered in states with high or no cap on interest rates. American Express is located in Utah (no cap), Bank of America is in Arizona (36%), Citibank is in South Dakota (no cap), Capital One is in Virginia (no cap), Providian is in New Hampshire (no cap), and JP Morgan Chase, MBNA (now Bank of America), Morgan Stanley/Discover, and HSBC are all located in Delaware (no cap).

Department of Holy Crap They Make A Ton of $$$$$

47. Each American household receives approximately 6 offers a month. The typical response rate is .33% (one third of one percent). You can opt out of these mailings via OptOutPrescreen.
48. Each direct mailing acquisition costs approximately $80, according to R.K. Hammer, bank card advisory firm.
49. Credit card companies earned $90.1B in interest in 2006, up from $89.4B the year before (according to R.K. Hammer).
50. Credit card companies earned $55.2B in fees in 2006, up from $54.8B the year before (according to R.K. Hammer).

Bonus Fun Fact:
Mastercard’s market capitalization is a whopping $14.24B, American Express’s stands at $71.62B, and Morgan Stanley stands at $86.40B. Visa is not publicly traded (yet). While you can’t compare their market caps because such a large part of Amex and Morgan Stanley’s businesses are not in credit cards, it’s still interesting to look at the numbers. Incidentally, Bank of America has a market cap of $239.17B. (These figures as of 1/11/07)

This is the second of my big six income tax deductions for 2006 and this one is a little bit of a freebie because you don’t really need to do anything in order to claim it because your employer will automatically deduct 401K contributions from your income, which will ultimately be reported in your W-2. So, with a 401K, you simply do nothing and you get this deduction. How about people who contribute to a Traditional IRA? And for those who have businesses, or are independent contractors, and are contributing to a SEP-IRA as an employer (I’ll be doing this for the second year in a row)? That’s when things get a little trickier.

Traditional IRAs
If you have taxable income (and you won’t turn 70.5 this year), you’re eligible for a Traditional IRA. For 2006, you’re allowed to contribute $4,000 towards the Traditional IRA (this maximum limit is also shared with a Roth IRA, so you can only contribute a total of $4k any type of IRA) if you are under 50 and up to $5,000 if you’re over 50, it’s called a catch-up provision. You must open an IRA with an approved institution.

How much of the contribution you can deduct depends on your modified adjusted gross income. If you are a single filer, you get a 100% deduction if your MAGI is under $50,000; a partial if your income is between $50,000 and $60,000; and no deduction if your MAGI is over $60,000. If your MAGI is over $60,000, then it is far better you to contribute towards a Roth IRA since you get no deduction in the first place.

SEP-IRAs
If you have self-employment income, the Simplified Employee Pension Plan (SEP-IRA) is a great way to defer some of your income and any business, sole proprietorships included, that earns any income can start something like this. You can contribute up to 25% of compensation to a maximum of $44,000 (2006 limits) and deduct this from your Schedule C income.

For more on SEP-IRAs, I wrote a whole series of articles when I was investigating it for my side business (this site), hopefully you will find them helpful:

• Primer on Self-Employment Taxes, or Why SEP-IRAs? - A brief introduction to self-employment taxes and my logic in opening a SEP-IRA in the first place.
• Introduction to SEP-IRAs - More on SEP-IRAs and how the employer deduction works.
• Vanguard Deposit Recoding Sample Letter - I accidentally made a contribution as an employee (bad, because the SEP-IRA contribution limits are shared with Roth and Traditional, and I maxed out my Roth contribution already) so I had to send Vanguard a letter to reclassifying the contribution as an employer contribution for 2006.

For anyone who runs their own business and has hired an accountant (or anyone who has gone to an H&R Block, based on what I’ve heard), you’ll run into someone who will aggressively pursue deductions even if you’ll feel a little uneasy about taking them. Now, it’s hard to figure out whether or not the deduction is legitimate for your situation and each one of us has a different level of tolerance for aggressive deduction taking but Jeanne Fleming and Leonard Schwartz recommend that you simply ask the accountant to explain the reasoning behind the deduction.

I agree with their argument that you shouldn’t accept any of these explanations:

• The likelihood of an audit is low.
• Everyone else is doing it. (Seems very grade school-ish of an answer doesn’t it?)
• The penalties are low if you’re caught.

With the wealth of information on the internet, you can simply shelve the deduction for now and do a little research on it. While nothing online, short of the IRS website, can be a definitive answer, many sites can easily tell you if you should be wary of taking a deduction. You can always email me and I can give you my unfounded opinion or, if you’d like, I can post the question on this site and hopefully someone will be able to steer you in the right direction.

Remember, in the end it’s your neck on the line with your tax return, no matter who actually fills it out, so if you wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a deduction after doing your research, don’t take it.

Source: CNN Money

I was reading an article in the WSJ’s Startup Journal about whether or not claiming a home office deduction was worth it, on a case by case basis, and what calculations you’d need to do in order to figure that out. Essentially the trade off is whether the extra time required to document a home office really makes the payoff worthwhile.

Here are essentially my costs for the year (given my home office is ~10%):

• Electricity: $8/month
• Insurance: $5/month

I also have the depreciation aspect of the room but in looking at it all, it doesn’t seem worth it for me to go through all that effort and risk the chances of an audit. Most of my expenses have nothing to do with my home and so I can claim them anyway (internet, computer costs, domains, hosting, etc.)

Source: Startup Journal

Nickel and I were talking about the social security and he told me that you only have to pay on your first $94,200 of income, which was something we both knew already. For your typical employee, this calculation is very simple and done by your employer, you pay 6.2% of your salary up to $94,200 towards social security. Every dollar you earn after that will not be subjected to social security.

Now, all the literature on the social security website gives you a scenario where the $94,200 is entirely employee income, in which case the answers are cut and try: pay up to $5,840.40, after that you’re home free with respect to social security. They also give you the scenario where the $94,200 is entirely self-employment income, in which case you’re on the hook for both sides (employee and employer) to the tine of 12.4% or $11,680.80.

Now, what happens when you have a mixture of both? If I made $50,000 from my job and $50,000 from self-employment, is social security taken out from the job income and then the double-hit social security taken from the self-employment? Or you do you take the double-hit first from your self-employment? I can’t seem to find any literature on it so if anyone knows and can point me to something “official” I would truly appreciate it!