“Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Except for not patenting electricity Benjamin Franklin is usually correct.
In regards to the life cycle of your web hosting company his timing is impeccable.
Your company should do everything possible not to pay taxes. You can either give it to the government, great benefit there, or grow your business and hence the economy. Hire more employees (let them pay taxes), spend money on capital equipment and that whole channel line pay taxes. But remember you don’t want your company to pay taxes. Not on April 15th.
Smart and profitable industrialists, hopefully like you, avoid taxes. That is one of the commanding reasons for acquiring a business. Most web host firms have lousy balance sheets. They have depreciated the assets and have nothing to shield profits, they pay taxes.
I always find it sort of magical that you can acquire an asset (buy a company) that was fully depreciated yesterday, put it on your balance sheet today (stepping up the assets as accounts say) and voila! you have a complete new depreciation schedule protecting your cash. Sort of like asparagus cropping up in the spring, where did that come from?
So you say…“I am profitable but don’t have any money to make an acquisition Tom”. Even a better reason to take out a government loan. That is exactly what not paying taxes is, a differed no interest loan from the government. And if you screw up sort of risk free.
Now Ben was correct…nothing is certain but death and taxes. In your case the death of your company. Don’t frown, this is just the end of the investment period…maybe the buyer of your company will keep the name, who cares?…your out. Now you want to pay a lot of taxes, big time taxes. You have taken those government loans and parlayed them into your success. As Franklin said taxes were certain, he just did not state when.
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