We Are at Your Service
September 13, 2019
Many people I speak to
Admit to budgeting by….
How much did we spend last year…..
How do you know what you spent last year….
Was the correct amount
Is that your comfort level…
In today’s growing market
It is good to look at all your business costs…
Do not take what you paid last year
As the cost of doing business
HBS specializes in validating what you currently are paying and
Providing savings on everyday costs that many people take for granted…
• Communications…Voice…Cloud Solutions…Internet / Data Connectivity
• Utilities… Gas and Electric Supply / Demand Solutions…Renewable Energy
• Unemployment Tax…How do you know your current unemployment rate is correct…
• Sales Tax…State Tax laws are complicated…You may be paying too much and not knowing it
• Property Tax…Many businesses continue to pay property taxes on prior assessments
Our clients are always surprised
When they first learn how much they are able to save…
We invite you to be our next success story
You too…
Can increase your efficiencies and
Lower your everyday business costs
We are at your service…
Did I Sign That
April 19, 2018
When I first meet people
They always ask…
So… what do you do…
We save companies money…
That normally gets a pretty positive response…
People like to save money…
Time for a quickie quiz…
How many of you have signed a contract…
Thought you got a good deal
And never looked at the paperwork again
Can I see a show of hands…
You…
Yea…. you over there
Is your hand up…
It looks like you wanted to put your hand up
Come on…
Admit it….we all have done it…
I believe that all of us are well intention-ed…
But… we just get busy
We are always putting out fires
The first thing we do with any new client
Is validate what are you currently paying
Are you paying the exact rate you actually signed for…
Believe it or not…
This is not always the case
I have clients tell me….
Yea… we signed a contract and they told me..
I was well below market prices
I am glad to hear that…
I hope you did get a great deal
But…
Do you mind if I see the contract…
And could we get a copy of your latest bill…
I can’t tell you how many times
We find that the client is being charged
More than what they had signed for
Note: there are times
That the state may approve an additional charge
Due to infrastructure upgrades
But this additional charge
Should be clearly noted on your bill
We always direct the client
To call the provider
And clarify…
Why are we paying this higher rate…
Our contract states we should be paying…
Guess what the response normally is…
Oh, we’re sorry
That was billed improperly
Let us correct that…
We can give you a credit
Or send you a refund
Our clients have received refunds for thousands of $$$
This is your money…
Don’t be afraid to ask for it back…
Always know what you are paying…
And if you are not sure
Give us a call
HBS leaves no stone unturned
In our search for savings
We find ways to save you money
Every Day is a Gift…
Thanks for the referrals
The Competitive Advantage
November 9, 2017
Many of the people I talk to
Admit to budgeting by….
How much did we spend last year?
How do you know what you spent last year;
Was the correct amount?
It may be your comfort level amount…
Do not take what you paid last year
As the cost of doing business.
In today’s market….
The competitive advantage belongs
To businesses that find smart solutions
To the challenges they face.
One way to keep this edge is….
By taking control of your expenses.
HBS validates what you are currently spending
Identifies sources of additional revenue
That increase your company’s bottom line.
HBS leaves no stones unturned
In our search for savings.
We find ways to save you money…
How do we do it?
We know where to look…
The Cost of Doing Business
April 18, 2016
Most people I talk to
Admit to budgeting by….
How much did we spend last year?
How do you know what you spent last year;
Was the correct amount?
It may be a comfort level amount
In today’s growing market
It is good to look at all your costs…
Do not take what you paid last year
As the cost of doing business.
Just think…
The iphone was invented 9 years ago
Look how it has revolutionized how we do business
Businesses were once paying over $1000 a month for T1’s
You can now get 10 times the speed for a fraction of the cost
Cloud technology is transforming business…
Natural gas prices were once over $10 a dekatherm
We now have a new floor and….
Companies are saving thousands of $$$
In the deregulated gas and electric market
Did you know that NJ and PA have over a 12% error rate
In the payment of unemployment claims
The state is taking money out of your account
Without asking.
When property values went down
How come we continued to pay the same property taxes?
Is sales tax really the cost of doing business…
What is this real property exemption?
These are questions we all should be asking ourselves…
These are questions we deal with…
Everyday
Don’t just settle and accept that
What we are currently paying
Is the cost of doing business…
At HBS
We validate what you are currently paying and
Look for opportunities to save you money
We are experts in providing smart solutions
That will grow your bottom line.
Getting What You Paid For
March 14, 2016
- Communication – Voice, Data, Hosted, Cloud, Disaster Recovery
- Utilities – Natural Gas, Electric
- Business Taxes – Payroll, Sales, Property
- Business Insurance – Group Health, Package Policies
Unemployment Insurance Cuts Come After Tax Cuts: Report
August 3, 2012
As reported in Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — In March, the commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Labor, Mark Butler, explained how the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund had gone broke.
“In an attempt to curry favor with Georgia businesses, Gov. Roy Barnes declared a ‘tax holiday’ before Barnes’ failed 2002 re-election campaign,” Butler wrote. “Businesses stopped paying into the trust fund. By the time we hit the Great Recession –- and many, many Georgians became unemployed through no fault of their own — the $2 billion Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund had been reduced by $1.3 billion.”
“Plainly speaking,” Butler added, “Georgia had not saved for that rainy day.”
Georgia lawmakers agreed to much of Butler’s plan to restore the trust fund to solvency — cutting the duration of benefits in an effort to save money. The legislature also modestly increased the amount of wages subject to the state payroll taxes that fund the unemployment system.
While the cuts to unemployment benefits were relatively drastic, the tax cutting that preceded them was typical. Most states failed to make prudent decisions about funding their unemployment trust funds over the years, according to a comprehensive report from the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group.
States now owe $43 billion to the federal government, according to NELP policy analyst Mike Evangelist, and it’s likely lawmakers will rely more heavily on benefit cuts than tax hikes in order to get out of debt.
“Over the past 30 years, support for accepted norms in the UI program has been systematically eroded, with state lawmakers now more willing to go after long‐standing features of the program, such as the duration of state benefits or suitable work protections that were previously seen as untouchable,” Evangelist wrote in the report.
Businesses pay both state and federal unemployment taxes for each worker on payroll — state taxes fund the first 26 weeks of benefits for laid off workers, and federal taxes pay for extra benefits that Congress puts in place during recessions. When a state unemployment trust fund runs dry, the state can borrow from the federal government to pay benefits. If a state borrows for too long, federal payroll taxes go up.
When under pressure to refill trust funds, it used to be that state lawmakers would seek savings by tightening eligibility rules. But this year Georgia joined six other states states that had cut the standard 26 weeks duration of benefits for the first time ever. While each state differed in how they cut benefits, Georgia put benefits on a sliding scale that goes up and down with the state’s unemployment rate. When the rate goes down, the duration of benefits could be as low as 14 weeks. The upper limit is 20 weeks.
The states were strapped for cash because tens-of-millions of additional people filed claims, but also because of tax cuts.
According to Evangelist, 31 states cut unemployment taxes 20 percent or more between 1995 and 2005. And from 2000 to 2009, the overall percentage of wages subject to state unemployment taxes fell to the lowest level in the history of the federal-state unemployment system. In 2007, states were collectively $38 billion shy of recommended trust fund reserves.
Doug Holmes, an unemployment insurance expert who advocates for businesses, suggested states would be unwise to try and meet funding thresholds “because to do so would require dramatic increases in state unemployment taxes that would place these states in an uncompetitive position to attract and keep businesses in their states.”
It’s unlikely states will want to hike taxes to pay for unemployment, Evangelist wrote in his report. “Realistically, it is unreasonable to believe that states will close this gap without doing further harm to the UI program’s ability to sustain unemployed workers and their families through periods of temporary job loss.”
‘We’ll Fight This To The Death’: The Vicious Capitol Hill Battle Between Banks and Credit Unions
March 22, 2012
As reported by Zach Carter and Ryan Grimm of the HuffingtonPost
WASHINGTON — In early February, Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus called for a meeting between two of the most quietly influential interest groups in the nation’s capital: credit unions and community banks.
Bachus, chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, was looking to ensure the passage of a slew of federal favors benefiting both sides. All the lobbyists had to do was show up at a meeting and figure out how to work together.
It was too much to ask.
The Credit Union National Association and the Independent Community Bankers Association immediately agreed to the sit-down, but as the meeting approached the community bankers abruptly cancelled the event, according to lobbyists and congressional staffers familiar with the plans.
“There was supposed to be a couple of joint meetings with different congressional offices and with the leadership of Financial Services. And the banks decided that we had too many bills in play and they didn’t want to meet with us,” says Linda Armyn, a senior vice president for Bethpage Federal Credit Union.
It’s no small matter to cancel on a committee chairman. ICBA had performed the Capitol Hill equivalent of cussing out the boss at an office Christmas party. Still, the group has no regrets.
“There won’t be any meetings. There won’t be any compromise. There won’t be any deals. There won’t be any discussions,” says ICBA chief economist Paul Merski.
To most folks, community banks and credit unions are indistinguishable. Both are often viewed as good-guy alternatives to Wall Street banks, eschewing the too-big-to-fail crowd’s phantom, subprime profits in favor of safe, consumer-friendly products. After the 2008 financial crash, that strategy allowed them to reap financial rewards and reputational halos. The “Move Your Money” movement and Bank Transfer Day shifted billions of dollars worth of business from Wall Street to these small lenders.
But community banks and credit unions each operate under different government charters and regulatory regimes. They compete for the same good-guy customer base, and are openly hostile with each other on Capitol Hill. Their mutual animosity is frequently unmoored from profit margins and bottom lines, a passionate conflict that at times seems like a Washington version of the Hatfields and McCoys.
“The credit unions have become the skunk at the garden party,” Merski says.
“The hypocrisy of the bank lobby appears to have no end,” Credit Union National Association (CUNA) CEO O. William Cheney said during a November hearing.
But while the dispute between the two groups goes back decades, their most recent clash serves as a window into the way American government works — or doesn’t work — in the 21st century. Legislative scuffles between entrenched interest groups occasionally gather enough momentum to attract public attention. Last year’s blowout over debit card swipe fees hijacked the Senate schedule for nearly six months, and the Stop Online Piracy Act sparked furious online protests.
Most of the time, the special interest stranglehold over Congress is exercised relatively quietly, in small-bore negotiations that never really get off the ground. Even if the bills go nowhere, they present lucrative fundraising opportunities for lawmakers, while devouring the time and attention that elected officials could be using to attend to the public good — say, solving the jobs crisis, ending homelessness or improving the standard of living for the one in four American children who currently live in poverty.
Instead, lawmakers expend tremendous amounts of energy trying to bridge emotional divides between favored interest groups that are accustomed to getting their way and have little interest in compromise — like, for example, credit unions and community banks.
Few fight harder in Washington than your cuddly local lenders.
“People always say it’s Wall Street, but the big banks aren’t the most potent lobbyists, because everybody hates them,” says Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “It’s the credit unions and the community banks because of their grassroots networks.”
A big bank like Citigroup appears to have oceans of lobbying clout that a small community bank lacks. But every congressional district has a community bank and a local credit union. As united forces, the ICBA and CUNA can (sometimes) defeat even their Wall Street competitors on the Hill.
This week, they will flex that muscle. CUNA expects 4,000 members of the credit union community to fly in to Washington for the group’s annual lobbying convention — including at least one from every congressional district.
Like the credit unions, community banks will be making their annual descent on Capitol Hill later this year. Both groups have profitable requests pending in Congress.
The Communities First Act, introduced in April 2011, reads like ICBA’s wish-list for the entire year. During a November hearing on the bill, Georgetown University Law School professor Adam Levitin criticized the bill as a set of unearned giveaways for small financial firms — tax cuts, accounting gimmicks to hide losses, weaker capital requirements and even immunity from some forms of scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But whatever its impact on communities, the bill would undoubtedly help banks pad their profits.
“It does nothing for communities,” Levitin said, calling the bill “narrow, special-interest pleading.”
Credit unions, meanwhile, are seeking legislation that would allow them to expand their business lending operations. Credit unions are currently barred from issuing business loans in excess of 12.25 percent of their total assets, an arbitrary rule that banks were able to slip into a 1998 law over the objections of both credit unions and President Bill Clinton’s administration.
Over the past year, credit union lobbyists have amassed 121 co-sponsors — 46 Republicans and 75 Democrats — for the Small Business Lending Enhancement Act, a bill that would raise that business lending cap to 27 percent. Credit unions argue that allowing them to make more business loans will help small firms hire, claiming the bill will create 140,000 jobs.
Community banks and credit unions need each other. Neither the Communities First Act nor the Small Business Lending Enhancement Act is likely to pass on its own, prompting Rep. Bachus’ attempt to combine them. (Bachus’ office did not return requests for comment). The only trouble? The credit unions and community banks have been at each other’s throat for decades.
“It’s a very visceral reaction they have,” says Ryan Donovan, a top CUNA lobbyist, referring to community bankers. “The ICBA would rather have their entire legislative agenda burned than let our small bill pass.”
On the bill that would lift the lending cap on credit unions, ICBA’s Merski says,”We’ll fight this to the death because of the fundamental philosophical unfairness. It’s almost un-American, really.”
Banks have little to lose from the credit union bill, and large potential profits to gain from their own legislation. Credit unions do very little business lending. For the most part, they stick to simple, standardized consumer products like checking accounts, mortgages and credit cards. Credit unions are generally small, even compared to community banks, and account for just 1 percent of the commercial lending market nationwide, according to CUNA, with an average loan amount of only $220,000.
“We’re not talking shopping malls,” explains CUNA senior vice president for communications Mark Wolff. “We’re talking landscaping and bakeries.”
Even community banks that compete head-to-head with specific credit unions simply will not lose very much if the credit union bill passes. The credit union group only pegs the gains from their legislation at 140,000 jobs — a drop in the bucket relative to the jobs crisis. Yet the legislative arm-wrestling continues.
“If you look at the marketplace, the banks have 95 percent of the market share. There isn’t a whole lot of data that supports we’re taking their business,” says Armyn of the Bethpage Federal Credit Union. “I mean, we’re taking a piece of their business, but if you look at it on the grand scale, they still have 95 percent of the market share.”
But the battle isn’t really over balance sheets. It’s over those “philosophical” differences Merski cites. Talking to members of both groups, bankers essentially think credit unions are tax cheats, while credit unionists see bankers as greed-mongers.
Credit unions are nonprofits owned by their customers, a unique status among financial institutions which allows them to be exempt from income taxes. But a credit union charter comes with major drawbacks — they can’t pay dividends to shareholders, since they don’t have any shareholders, nor can their executives enjoy wild paydays in the form of stock options. They also only have one option for growth: profit. Banks can take on debt or issue stock to capitalize on profit opportunities, but credit unions have nothing but year-end earnings to draw on.
Bank executives do enjoy higher paydays. Among credit unions with at least $100 million in assets, the median CEO pay comes out to $211,558, according to CUNA. According to data compiled by SNL Financial, publicly traded banks with less than $10 billion in assets (a common threshold in regulation and legislation to define a “community bank”) pay out median CEO compensation of $385,577.
As with most CEO pay in the financial industry, the bigger the bank, the better the potential payday, but community banks with less than $500 million in assets still paid a median of $248,437 — about 15 percent better than the median for all credit unions over $100 million in assets, according to the SNL Financial data. The largest credit union is Navy Federal, with $46 billion in assets.
But both sides use such relative metrics to criticize the other.
“They don’t pay taxes!” says ICBA’s Merski.
“They don’t get that we really are a different model,” counters CUNA’s Wolff.
Both sectors, of course, have always been free to change their charters whenever they wish. Credit unions file to become banks all the time, and there is no law barring banks from adopting a credit union model.
This year’s skirmish between community banks and credit unions will almost certainly dwindle into obscurity, a common fate for special interest legislation. Next year the two groups will undoubtedly concoct new slates of legislative demands, as is the nature of lobbying. But the public has still paid the opportunity cost for the lobbying push.
The dispute between credit unions and community banks is one of an endless array of Washington feuds that tend to not connect with the broader public interest. Even if the two groups had been able to put aside their differences and move their legislation forward, the tangible benefits for everyday Americans would have likely been minor. It doesn’t make much difference for most businesses whether they get their loan from a small bank or a credit union, so long as they get their loan. And the benefits that ICBA was seeking amount to a set of unhelpful deregulation.
Even if the uncounted hours of attention that were devoted to introducing the bills, garnering co-sponsors, holding hearings and briefing lawmakers had borne fruit, the public would still have been left out of the equation. Similar disputes take place every year between dozens of special interests, on every committee in Congress. And, in this case, the special interests groups themselves say the fuss has largely proved to be just that.
“We all just want to move forward and grow,” says Armyn, the Bethpage Federal Credit Union executive, frustrated with the political gridlock. “To me, it’s just silly.”
Debt Ceiling Talks Make Way For Tough Trade-Offs
June 17, 2011
As reported in Huffington Post
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON — Negotiators trying to tame the United States’ spiraling debt said on Thursday that they had tentatively agreed on a number of cuts and are now gearing up for tough trade-offs that could lead to trillions of dollars in savings.
“We’ve gone through a first, serious scrub of each of the categories that make up the total federal budget,” Vice President Joe Biden told reporters. “Now we’re getting down to the real hard stuff: I’ll trade you my bicycle for your golf clubs.”
Biden and top Democratic and Republican lawmakers aim to reduce the country’s stubborn budget deficits by $4 trillion over the next 10 years in order to give lawmakers the political cover to raise the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling to prevent a default.
The agreed-upon cuts will serve as bargaining chips in the coming weeks as the two sides tackle a stark divide over taxes and health benefits, participants said.
“Even stuff we agreed to that we may have refined today is all subject to be reopened if we don’t get agreement on some of the big issues. We’ve got a long way to go here,” said Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen.
But Republicans have refused to consider increased taxes, while Democrats have resisted wholesale changes to health benefits for the poor and the elderly.
COMPROMISE ON TAXES, HEALTHCARE?
Compromise is not impossible in these areas. Democrats hope to boost tax revenues primarily by ending breaks and closing loopholes, rather than raising rates. Two recent Senate votes have given them heart as Republicans backed closing tax breaks for ethanol providers.
On healthcare, Democrats have blasted a Republican plan that would scale back the Medicare health program for future retirees. But they have proposed less dramatic changes that could still save hundreds of billions of dollars.
Both President Barack Obama and Republicans have proposed significant changes to the Medicaid health program for the poor. Obama has also said he would support limiting medical malpractice lawsuits — a longtime Republican priority.
“I think we really are covering every type of spending program there is,” Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, told reporters. “We are doing all that we have set out to do.”
The group is stepping up negotiations as it faces a self-imposed deadline of July 1, with longer and more frequent talks set for next week.
The Obama administration has warned that it will run out of money to pay the nation’s bills if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by August 2 — a prospect that could push the country back into recession and upend financial markets across the globe.
Washington needs to show investors that it can rise above its dysfunctional reputation, Biden said.
“The single most important thing to do for the markets is convince them no, that’s not true, we can handle difficult decisions,” he said.
Republicans want at least $2 trillion in cuts, measured over 10 years, to go along with a similar increase in the debt ceiling to ensure Congress doesn’t have to revisit the politically toxic issue before the November 2012 elections.
The Biden group could claim another $2 billion in savings by mandating automatic cuts or tax increases if Congress doesn’t meet specified deficit targets in coming years.
Budget deficits in recent years have hovered at their highest level relative to the economy since World War Two. The deficit is projected to hit $1.4 trillion in the fiscal year that ends September 30.
(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Eric Walsh)
The Mistake of 2010
June 3, 2011
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 2, 2011
Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a blog post about the “mistake of 1937,” the premature fiscal and monetary pullback that aborted an ongoing economic recovery and prolonged the Great Depression. As Gauti Eggertsson, the post’s author (with whom I have done research) points out, economic conditions today — with output growing, some prices rising, but unemployment still very high — bear a strong resemblance to those in 1936-37. So are modern policy makers going to make the same mistake?
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
Mr. Eggertsson says no, that economists now know better. But I disagree. In fact, in important ways we have already repeated the mistake of 1937. Call it the mistake of 2010: a “pivot” away from jobs to other concerns, whose wrongheadedness has been highlighted by recent economic data.
To be sure, things could be worse — and there’s a strong chance that they will, indeed, get worse.
Back when the original 2009 Obama stimulus was enacted, some of us warned that it was both too small and too short-lived. In particular, the effects of the stimulus would start fading out in 2010 — and given the fact that financial crises are usually followed by prolonged slumps, it was unlikely that the economy would have a vigorous self-sustaining recovery under way by then.
By the beginning of 2010, it was already obvious that these concerns had been justified. Yet somehow an overwhelming consensus emerged among policy makers and pundits that nothing more should be done to create jobs, that, on the contrary, there should be a turn toward fiscal austerity.
This consensus was fed by scare stories about an imminent loss of market confidence in U.S. debt. Every uptick in interest rates was interpreted as a sign that the “bond vigilantes” were on the attack, and this interpretation was often reported as a fact, not as a dubious hypothesis.
For example, in March 2010, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Debt Fears Send Rates Up,” reporting that long-term U.S. interest rates had risen and asserting — without offering any evidence — that this rise, to about 3.9 percent, reflected concerns about the budget deficit. In reality, it probably reflected several months of decent jobs numbers, which temporarily raised optimism about recovery.
But never mind. Somehow it became conventional wisdom that the deficit, not unemployment, was Public Enemy No. 1 — a conventional wisdom both reflected in and reinforced by a dramatic shift in news coverage away from unemployment and toward deficit concerns. Job creation effectively dropped off the agenda.
So, here we are, in the middle of 2011. How are things going?
Well, the bond vigilantes continue to exist only in the deficit hawks’ imagination. Long-term interest rates have fluctuated with optimism or pessimism about the economy; a recent spate of bad news has sent them down to about 3 percent, not far from historic lows.
And the news has, indeed, been bad. As the stimulus has faded out, so have hopes of strong economic recovery. Yes, there has been some job creation — but at a pace barely keeping up with population growth. The percentage of American adults with jobs, which plunged between 2007 and 2009, has barely budged since then. And the latest numbers suggest that even this modest, inadequate job growth is sputtering out.
So, as I said, we have already repeated a version of the mistake of 1937, withdrawing fiscal support much too early and perpetuating high unemployment.
Yet worse things may soon happen.
On the fiscal side, Republicans are demanding immediate spending cuts as the price of raising the debt limit and avoiding a U.S. default. If this blackmail succeeds, it will put a further drag on an already weak economy.
Meanwhile, a loud chorus is demanding that the Fed and its counterparts abroad raise interest rates to head off an alleged inflationary threat. As the New York Fed article points out, the rise in consumer price inflation over the past few months — which is already showing signs of tailing off — reflected temporary factors, and underlying inflation remains low. And smart economists like Mr. Eggerstsson understand this. But the European Central Bank is already raising rates, and the Fed is under pressure to do the same. Further attempts to help the economy expand seem out of the question.
So the mistake of 2010 may yet be followed by an even bigger mistake. Even if that doesn’t happen, however, the fact is that the policy response to the crisis was and remains vastly inadequate.
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it; we did, and we are. What we’re experiencing may not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s little consolation for the millions of American families suffering from a slump that just goes on and on.
Hutchinson Business Solutions 