BUILDING  BRIDGES

Supporting businesses by lending good money to good businesses.  

Many of Mazon's clients and customers have undoubtedly driven the I-75 route south to Florida at one time or another during their travels. However, how many have ever taken the exit south of Tampa Bay to visit the beautiful City of Bradenton? Discovered in 1539 by Hernando DeSoto when he landed on Shaw's Point to begin his 4,000-mile trek in search of El Dorado, "the lost city of gold," the Town of Manatee was incorporated on May 19, 1903 and merged with Bradenton in the 1940s. Today, renamed City of Bradenton, it covers 14.44 square miles, and 53,823 residents call it home. Tourists and "snowbirds" abound year-round to enjoy beaches, Bishop Planetarium, Parker Aquarium, historical museums and shopping. including the well-known Village of the Arts. It is home to the corporate offices of Tropicana Products (the famous juice maker), Champs Sports and Beall's Department Stores. It is also is the spring training home of Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates and their minor league affiliate, the Marauders.

Rick and Christina Lee moved to the City of Bradenton in 1994 where they maintain an active general law practice. Married for 40 years, they have two adult children and seven grandchildren -- and both have dual-careers as artists!

Rick is a lawyer first, with second career as a luthier (a maker of stringed instruments). When he is not practicing law, he specializes in creating fine handmade acoustic and electric bass guitars, ukuleles and yet-unnamed instruments from exotic woods. His craft started during his military service days when he was stationed in Altus, OK.  He made "adjustments" to the guitars that he played (changed pickups, added more switches, replaced tuners, etc.). Soon some of these modifications became major reconstruction of the instruments. Friends (and friends-of-friends) asked him to help fix their guitars. He later attended Charles Fox's guitar building school in Vermont. While attending law school full time, he worked part-time as a musician, and earned additional money by repairing, and doing custom building of guitars. His guitar-building was put on hold during his law career, however, over the last five years, Rick has been transitioning from the courtroom back to the wood shop, where his love of the luthier craft takes priority on most weekends. Like all good artists, he has about 15 projects going at once, in addition to playing guitar and bass at their local church.

He builds three styles of electric guitars and two styles of electric basses: Bolt-on neck (best known for being used in all of Leo Fender's creations); set neck (which greatly increases sustain); and neck-thru (resulting in a very bright articulate note, usually reserved for the most exotic and sophisticated bass). He is currently building guitars where the sound hole has either moved to one side or where there are two sound holes. He plans to spend the next several years building double-sound-hole guitars as he sees no reason to put a hole in the middle of the top "active plate." Rick also uses precious and semi-precious stones in the rosettes (the decoration around sound-holes). Additionally, he builds all four sizes of ukulele (soprano, concert, tenor and baritone) in the traditional shape -- what is not traditional is his use of the double sound holes.

In 2006, he completed a one-of-a-kind double cut-away electric guitar he named "Time is Money."  The body is constructed of redwood and the neck is maple with a rosewood fret board. The guitar face features watch parts come from a variety of wrist watches, with paper money from Thailand, India, Afghanistan, Rumania, Iran, Bolivia, Yugoslavia, and Zambia.  The coins are from Denmark, Russia, Germany, England and China.

Rick also builds handmade, hand-painted electronic boutique effects devices for electric guitar players, "Art You Can Step On," which includes fuzz boxes, graphic equalizers, distortion devices and more. He does all of his own wiring of the effects, then paints the boxes with exotic swirl designs, and mounts the effects in the boxes.

Christina has been Rick's legal assistant for 24 years and has a second career as a jewelry design artist.  She majored in jewelry design at college in the mid-1980s, working with precious metals (gold and silver) and stained glass. She later became fascinated with the effects of fusing multiple pieces of glass and began creating her own glass designs for jewelry. In August of 2004, she taught herself the art of lampworking (a type of ancient glasswork that uses a gas-fueled torch to melt rods of glass, and forming the soft glass with tools and hand movements) glass beads -- she usually spends several days making 75-100 glass beads!

In the spring of 2006, she took up the art of silk painting and added hand-painted silk scarves to her creative designs. Then, in 2009, Christina resumed her long-time passion for the needle art of crocheting and knitting, and has branched out into designing her own garments and writing her own patterns. She currently teaches a local weekly knitting and crochet class to a creative mix of local students. Lee Shore Gallery offers Christina the online opportunity to showcase her artistic creations of one-of-a-kind jewelry designs, creations in fused glass, lampwork beads and precious metal clay, original hand-painted designs in 100% silk, off-wheel pottery, and other fused glass creations, which she calls "Art You Can Wear."  She currently sells her creations at art festivals/shows, private trunk shows, her website and other online venues.

(For more information, visit Christina's and Rick's websites:  www.CreationsByChristina.net; www.LeeLuthier.com, and www.LeeShoreGallery.com.  

Mazon's fee structure is based on a combination of the following criteria:  Anticipated monthly factoring volume; customer creditworthiness; number of factored customers; number of invoices sent to customers; average invoice amount and the average days to pay an invoice.

If you would like to find out more about our factoring services for your business and/or apply for an account with Mazon Associates, please phone us at 972-554-6967 (toll-free 800-442-2740) or visit our website www.mazon.com.

Many people make mistakes with business payroll tax because they are under the false assumption that the debts of a corporation do not flow through to the individual if the business fails. However, the situation can be quite different with payroll tax. The truth about failure to pay payroll taxes are:

A very high majority of payroll tax can never be discharged in bankruptcy. The 7.65% portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes paid from company funds probably can be discharged because it is not trust fund money. However, this is a very small portion of the payroll tax. The employee's Income Tax Withholding and the Employee's portion of the Social Security and Medicare taxes paid are trust fund monies and, therefore, can never be discharged as this money belongs to the employee. All businesses are being trusted to hand it over to the government. For those businesses that violate that trust, the penalties can be substantial.

The IRS will pursue collection of payroll tax much more aggressively than individual income tax. With income tax, the IRS tends to be reasonably flexible about working out payment arrangements, even when large amounts of money are owed. However, for payroll tax balances that are as little as $25,000 the IRS may talk about shutting a business down! Additionally, when discussing payment arrangements, they will want the money paid in full within 24 months, not the 72 months that is currently allowed under the new "Streamlined Installment Agreement for Individual Income Tax."

The following are two examples are real-life examples of tax mistakes made by individuals:

• Barry is a businessman who owed $30,000 in payroll tax and $30,000 in individual income tax. Barry had an IRA that he completely liquidated to get $30,000 and chose to pay off his individual income tax instead of his company's payroll tax liability. After becoming my client, Barry learned that not only is individual income tax potentially dischargeable in bankruptcy, but also the IRS is substantially more flexible in working out payment arrangements when it comes to individual income tax than they are with payroll tax.

• Facing a financial crisis, Van thought that his best course of action was to pay his vendors instead of his payroll tax because that would keep his declining business alive longer. He did not realize that vendor debt goes away when a company goes out of business, but payroll tax debt does not. Now that the company has finally closed its doors, Van's remaining vendor debt has gone away, but his payroll tax liability, which exceeds $100,000. I am meeting with IRS Appeals office about Van's case next month.

(Contributed by: John DiLucci, Masters of Taxation, Inc., Irving, Texas. www.Masters-of-Tax.com)

Sept. 2: VJ Day (WWII); Sept. 3: Labor Day; Sept. 9: Grandparents Day; Sept. 11: 911 Remembrance Day, Patriot Day; Sept. 16: Mayflower Day; Sept. 17: Citizenship Day, Constitution Day (and week), National Stepfamily Day; Sept. 19: Talk like a Pirate Day; Sept. 21: International Day of Peace, World Alzheimer's Day; Sept. 22: First Day of Autumn; American Business Women's Day; Sept. 25: National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims; Sept. 26: Johnny Appleseed Day; Sept. 28: Native American Day, World Rabies Day; Sept. 29: World Heart Day.  National Hispanic Heritage Month: Sept. 15-Oct. 15.

Notice: Mazon offices will be closed on Monday, Sept. 3rd in observance of Labor Day. We will resume normal business hours of 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 4th. You may still submit invoices during our closed hours via fax, e-mail or drop-slot to be processed on Tuesday.

Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country.  All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another.  Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation. -- Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor

The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882 in New York City in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union for a "workingman's holiday." The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations and in 1885 was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.  On June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.  The form that the holiday celebration should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday (1882): a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families.  This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day.  Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday.  Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.  The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem.  This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression.  Labor Day addresses by leading union oficials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio and television.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realizaton of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy.  It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership -- the American worker.

(Source: United States Department of Labor)

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.

-- Will Smith (actor)

Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, Published April 1, 2000 by Business Plus, ISBN-10: 0446677450, ISBN-13: 978-0446677455.

When Robert Kiyosaki, successful investor, author, and businessman, first published Rich Dad Poor Dad, he stated, "Your house is not an asset."  The so-called financial experts lambasted him.  But today, Robert's words ring truer than ever.  Rich Dad Poor Dad teaches you to think like the rich, and explains how money works -- giving you the secrets about money that rich teach their children and that the middle-class do not. In reading this book, you'll better understand the power that your thinking can have on your life.

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