Perpetual debate about the tax entities (Sole Proprietorship, LLC, C Corp, S Corp)

Even though there’s so much information out there (blogs, articles, books, references, discussion forums) to help people choose from different legal entities, it’s a difficult decision and it ultimately comes down to their personal situation and preferences.

 

I’ll simplify the different options and their impact:

 

• Sole Proprietorship : Simplest and Easiest. No forms needed except any filings with your state government like WA State needs you to acquire a Master Business License from the Business and Occupation (B&O) department. There’s no other paper work needed and no other administrative requirements except some accounting and reporting requirements from the tax filing perspective. You have all the control over how it functions, but the liability is all personal and similarly the taxes also flow to you and the individual needs to file a Schedule C for the sole prop taxes. You are also required to pay the self employment taxes which is a bummer.
• LLC : Little bit more complicated and time-consuming as it has more filing requirements. Similar to Sole Prop, the income is passed to the members of the LLC but the liability is not with the members, and hence the name Limited Liability Company. Participating members can choose the management aspects and the member salary is subject to self employment taxes. For partnerships LLCs, you’d need to file 1065 and K-1 forms.
• C Corp : More paperwork for filing and needs election of BoD (board of directors), and officers of the company. Also requires share distribution, annual meetings with MoMs (minutes of the meetings registered), stock holder meetings and annual report filings. Since the corporation is taxed at corp rate and the dividends are taxable for individuals, there is a possibility of double taxation. No corporation self employment tax but the salaries are subjected to self employment tax.
• S Corp :  Similar to C Corp, except that the income is passed directly to individuals involved. The income can be split as salary and distribution and the salary is subject to self employment taxes. S corp eliminates double taxation

Few notes about LLC:

• 1 member LLC can also be a Disregarded Entity
• Multi member LLC cannot be a Disregarded Entity and pays taxes as a partnership. The partnership files 1065 which generates a K-1 for each member. The K-1 is filed with individuals's 1040. In this case LLC acts as a pass-thru.
• When LLC needs to taxed as a corporation, they would file 8832 for Entity Classification Election
• LLC as a corporation : help on Pub 542 / 587

quick Python tutorial.

This is a good start for anyone getting their hands dirty on python

[source]

Phones, Operators and Frequency bands

When you are traveling internationally and trying to use the same phone everywhere (whether with the local sim or thru the roaming), it becomes difficult to keep track of what frequencies are used by what operators in which region of the country. Now with 3G (UMTS), the matrix is even more convoluted.

I’m listing the details before for my own convenience, but if you need additional information let me know.

GSM/GPRS/EDGE Bands (2G)

There are four different frequency bands which are used by the phone operators:

• 850 MHz 
• 900 MHz 
• 1800 MHz 
• 1900 MHz

US generally operates on 1900 MHz but AT&T still uses 850 MHz for some areas. T-Mobile uses only 1900 MHz but in some cases it provides roaming with AT&T using 850 MHz band. While internationally, you would need 900 MHz and 1800 MHz for GSM/GPRS.

 ATT GSM in US: 850 MHz and 1900 MHz (850 mainly for rural coverage)

 ATT 3G in US: 850/1900 MHz

 T-Mobile GSM in US: 1900 MHz
 T-Mobile 3G (UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+) in US: AWS 1700(uplink)/2100(downlink) MHz

 Roger Canada UMTS: 850 MHz
 Wind Mobile Canada: UMTS 1700

 Europe: O2/Vodafone/Orange : 2100 UMTS

Devices:

• iPhone : quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900). And HSDPA/UMTS : 850/1900/2100 
• TMobile US Nexus One: Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE. UMTS: 1900/1700/2100 
• TMobile US HTC HD2 : Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE. UMTS: 1900/1700/2100
• TMobile AT&T Nexus One: Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE. UMTS: 850/1900/2100

So, you cannot get an iPhone working on TMobile 3G and you cannot get a TMobile US Nexus One working on ATT 3G since its missing the 850 block. But there is an ATT friendly Nexus One too.
The 2100 UMTS is there to be friendly with Europe which operates on 1900/2100

India:
Hutch Delhi : 900/1800
Idea Delhi: 1800
Bharti Airtel Delhi: 900
MTNL Delhi: 900
Vodafone Delhi: 900/1800

Idea Haryana: 900
Hutch Haryana: 900

Hutch UP East/West: 900
Idea UP West: 900

Clean Energy 2010 Trending Up

China is churning out the low cost infrastrucutre for Wind and Solar which in part is fueling the greater adoption of clean energy. Although people are sckeptical is China can continue that given their attitude and difficult framework for fostering entrepreneurship and innovation.

The global trend for investing in Renewables is looking good and some VC's will continue to make money while other's gamble on less 'cleaner' initiatives like ethanol.
[Source]

U.S. Venture and Global Clean-Energy Investments:

In 2009, U.S.-based venture capital investments in energy technologies declined from $3.2 billion in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2009, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. However, as a percent of total VC investments, energy tech grew from 11.4 percent in 2008 to 12.5 percent in 2009. This represented the largest share in the history of the clean-energy asset class.

The report can be downloaded from  http://www.cleanedge.com/reports/reports-trends2010.php

Digital Earth launched their website on Search4Oil

Finally Digital Earth Inc. is out of their beta and launched the website as Search4Oil portal at http://www.search4oil.com/

Tradable RECs Come to California

According to the law firm Stoel Rives, "Under the CPUC's decision, the utility can simply purchase the TRECs from the renewable generator, without having to purchase the associated power. The delivery requirement still remains, however. The RECs must be associated with the delivery of some power to California in order to be counted toward a utility's RPS requirement."

Its a good start but as you can see that its only circumventing the problem and not really solving anything. As another blogger pointed out that it'll just enable Colorado sell their RECs to them since they bought too much too soon.

Would be nicer too see this extend to individual trading instead of paying the utiliites companies to buying in on consumer's behalf.

Cheat sheet on Plantronics Voyager (510)

I started this off as writing about the vairous light combinations, but then ended up writing the whole thing for my reference...

So, the section below covers all the lights I've come across specifically on Voyager 510:

1. Constant Red : When the Voyager is plugged in and is being charged.
2. Constant Blue: When the Voyager is plugged in and is finished charging.
3. Red Blue blinnking/flashing: Voyager is ready for pairing. This happens when you keep the + VOL and CALL button on the boom pressed.
4. Blue blinking/flashing: Voyager is working, paired and online
5. Red blinking/flashing: Battery low

Other things which you can do with the headset are:

1. Turn on: keep the black power button pressed for three seconds. Blinks blue once and that is the indication that its turned on.
2. Turn off: keep the black power button pressed for three seconds. Blinks red once and that is the indication that its turned off.
3. Disable blue blinking when paired/online: Turn off and then turn on by keeping the +VOL and black POWER button pressed for three seconds. (apparently this doesn't work in my case, so I might be returning it)
4. Enable blue blinking then paired/online: Repeat the above process (#3)
5. Reset the headphone if keys stop responding: Press  - VOL and POWER button together for three seconds.
6. Redial last number: quick double click on the CALL button
7. Accept the call: when the headset is ringing, press the CALL button to accept it
8. Pass the call to the phone from the headset: Long press on the call button until you hear two beeps
9. Take back the call from the phone to the headset: Press the CALL button
10. Cancel/End the call: Press on the CALL button
11. Reject the call: When the headset is ringing because of an incoming call, long press the CALL button to reject the call.

Getting Plantronics Voyager 510 to work with Windows 7

This applies to many other bluetooth headsets out there who have trouble working with  Vista or Windows 7.

One of the main problem that show up is that the pairing is successful (with Bluetooth Perepheral Device), but it doesn't find any drivers. Here's a snippet from the windows support website to get this working.

Due to the fact that Windows Vista doesn’t support Bluetooth headset profile, if you want to use a Bluetooth headset with your adapter, you’ll need a little creative workaround to add the headset profile to the default Microsoft stack. Download either of the x86 or x64 compilations of the CSR Bluetooth driver and extract its contents to a folder. When you try to pair your headset to your computer, Windows will ask for drivers for the headset since it doesn’t find the appropriate headset profile. Point Windows to the folder where you have extracted the CSR drivers to make it work. Make sure you go into the device in the Bluetooth Devices panel and check off the boxes for headset, etc. [Source]

There are many people suggesting various approaches which haven't worked for me or for many others.

The CSR drivers are mentioned on the above referenced website or can be downloaded from
•Download CSR Bluetooth Driver v1.0.0.376 for Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008 x86 (32-bit) as a 216 kB (221,687 bytes) CAB file which should extract to 674 kB (691,122 bytes)


•Download CSR Bluetooth Driver v1.0.0.376 for Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008 x64 (64-bit) as a 232 kB (237,897 bytes) CAB file which should extract to 773 kB (792,118 bytes)
 
To get Skype working with the headset, you need to make sure that you are able to select "Bluetooth Hand-free Audio" as a Playback Device when you right click on the "volume" icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
 

You will also need to change the Audio  Settings in Skype so it uses Bluetooth device for both recording and playback.
 

 
Hope this works for everyone having such issues.