Articles for Legal & Accounting Experts
Friday, September 05, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - The truncation and expiration date parts of the FACTA legislation turned out to be the worst sort of "gotcha" legislation...
Friday, August 15, 2008
David Keller - You know it is going to cost something to get it going, staff it, find the right software, make room in your dealership for the people staffing it, monitor the results, create advertising, update your Web site and phone numbers, etc. ...
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - Another problem that the housing mess will create for dealers will come from the legislative backlash that we will see as our elected representatives fall all over each other in their attempts to “fix” the housing problems...
Friday, July 18, 2008
David Keller - New car dealerships rely almost entirely on trade-ins to round out the mix of vehicles on their lot. What happensif your more expensive vehicle sales slow down and stop generating these trade-ins?...
Monday, July 07, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - I am frequently asked whether dealers’ use of mandatory arbitration agreements as a defense against class action lawsuits and as a way to escape potentially crippling court-awarded damages is a tactic that actually works...
Monday, June 30, 2008
David Keller - Under the act, small businesses will be able to write off up to $250,000 of qualifying expenses in 2008. In addition, businesses will be able to deduct an additional 50 percent of the cost of certain investments in 2008...
Monday, June 02, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - We’ve been warning for the last several years that the AGs are taking an increasingly active interest in car dealership advertising practices, and the advertising practices they are interested in include Internet activities...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
David Keller - The inventory account that reflects the dollar amount of technician’s labor on open repair orders is work in process inventory. This account should be shown on your balance sheet after the parts inventory account along with...
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Dave Keller - One of the problems I see in many dealerships is the lack of motivation from the sales staff, both sales managers and salespeople, to actively and accurately determine what brought the customer into your dealership...
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - If the customers who buy during an [employee pricing event] pay more than the dealership's employees, the dealership's mail become Exhibit 1 in an "unfair and deceptive acts and practices" lawsuit by a customer.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Dave Keller - Most fraud is uncovered because the person committing the fraud made a simple mistake or forgot to do something that day to cover it up. Most fraud, if committed by an office manager or controller, is normally difficult to discover...
Friday, March 14, 2008
Tom Hudson - The FTC's Disposal Rule requires companies to dispose of credit reports and information from credit reports in a safe and appropriate manner...
Monday, March 03, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - A company was interested in buying a substantial part of a Georgia dealer’s BHPH portfolio of retail installment sales contracts. My contact wanted me to look over a few deal files and tell him if the documentation looked good.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
David Keller - If your sales and gross profits are declining, are your total expenses decreasing proportionately? If not, it’s time to review your income statement. Print your income statement in a format with the last 12 months side-by-side in...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Ron Smith - Many succession planning decisions will be governed by not only the factory sales and service agreement (“Franchise Agreement”), but also by appropriate provisions of state franchise statutes...
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - The foundation of the report is Public Citizen’s claim, based on its study of nearly 34,000 collection cases, arbitrators found in favor of businesses in 94 percent of the arbitration proceedings...
Thursday, January 17, 2008
David Keller - The buyer should always review any and all existing leases of the dealer to verify which leases must be assumed through purchase...
Saturday, December 22, 2007
David Keller - Walk into your dealership tomorrow and begin to look at it differently. Or better yet, why wait until tomorrow? Walk out the front door right now, get into your vehicle and drive around the block...
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Thomas B. Hudson, Esq. - When the dealer and the buyer are in different states, a lot of different things are happening. The business models we have seen range from the safest to the more dangerous, from a legal standpoint...
Sunday, December 09, 2007
David Keller - Can you believe its almost the end of the year? Start your end-of-the-year tax planning now. Don’t wait until it is too late to make changes to your operations, setup up a new company or hire the extra person you have been talking about...