Welcome to Alpha-Mail, the monthly newsletter about tax credits and incentives for tax professionals.

This month, see how the ACA (Affordable Care Act) impacts your clients' net after tax credit savings.  Also, learn about some alternate funding sources for your clients. We hope you can use this information to strengthen your client relationships! 

Thank you for reading Alpha-Mail -- please click reply to tell us what you think.

All the best, 

 Dale Stapler    Jim Tinsley
     Alpharesults, LLC 

We have heard a lot of concern about the new ACA healthcare program (also known as the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and other names) that starts in 2014. Many companies are considering big employee changes, such as reducing headcount, moving employees to part-time basis, and leveraging staffing firms/independent contractors. But be careful -- these changes could negatively impact your clients' tax credits and their net after tax savings.

We recently attended the Georgia Chamber of Commerce's conference on the new Federal Healthcare program (click here for upcoming sessions). Watch out for these state tax credit variables:

• Number of employees - different programs for small groups (49 or fewer employees) and large groups (50 or more employees), based on Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employees.
• Employee - employees that work 30 hours/week or more must be offered coverage.  
• Unknowns - lots of unknowns such as affiliated service group impact, common law employee clarification, and play-or-pay penalties.
• Federal Small Business Health Care Tax Credits -  may be available (company has 24 or fewer full-time employees and less than $50,000 in average employee wages, click here )

The following Georgia tax credits may apply to your clients' employees:

• Retraining Tax Credit - Each employee must average 24 hours/week or more and can include regular and leased employees
• Job Tax Credit (including Opportunity Zones, Less Developed Census Tracts and other) - Each employee must average 35 hours/week or more and can include regular and leased employees  

We recently attended The Georgia Financing Roundtable conference sponsored by the Council of Development Finance Agencies (CDFA, click here). This session highlighted federal, state, local, and private alternative financing tools available to economic development groups to assist companies with job growth. These alternatives include bonds, grants, tax credits, EB-5 financing and equity funding sources. There are a lot of alternatives available, especially for economically distressed and rural areas. Here is an overview:

• Invest Atlanta - Major push for downtown Atlanta for assisting start-ups, strengthening exports, and increasing foreign direct investments.
• Georgia - The Department of Community Affairs (DCA) provides grants and Industrial Development Bonds as well as providing guidelines for Job and Opportunity Zone tax credits (click here for DCA overview). Also, the 2014 legislature will consider the proposed Downtown Renaissance Tax Credits to redevelop downtown areas (HB 128 click here)
• Federal - Due to the budget, sequester, and other issues, federal incentives may be reduced over time. However, several programs are still available including new market tax credits, EB-5 program, and USDA rural development programs.
• Summary - Alternative financing tools are utilized less than 5% of the time in local economic development efforts. But creative financing could be utilized a lot more to obtain funds for economic development. For example, a new economic development project may be financed with "Capital Stacking." This approach may combine tax exempt bonds, EB-5 equity, and tax credits to finance a new project.

Alpharesults has assembled a team with the specialized knowledge and approach required to obtain Georgia income tax credits.  We are not a public accounting firm.  Rather, our services complement those of public accounting firms and do not create conflicted loyalties, because our professionals do not perform attestation work or other external audit functions.  

We focus on small to medium-sized businesses and work exclusively in Georgia with a wide variety of in-state and out-of-state accounting firms.  For more information on our services, follow this link.