Waterbed Prank
Smokers and Your Company’s Bottom Line
Does your company have employees who smoke? Smokers not only endanger their own health; they can also cost businesses big bucks!
While you may think that an employee’s choice to smoke is a strictly private matter, perhaps you’ll reconsider when you know what smokers can cost their employers. Here’s a few U.S. statistics that may surprise you.
- Health care costs for smokers are as much as 40% higher than for non-smokers in the same age group.
- Corporate employees who smoke cost their employers $1429 more per smoker, per year, in increased health care costs, as compared to non-smoking employees.
- Smokers cost U.S. employers over $40 billion a year to due to premature death and disability as a direct result of smoking.
- Various studies estimate that smokers are two to three times more often absent from work, as compared to non-smokers.
- Compared to non-smokers, in any given year, smokers are 50% more likely to be hospitalized and have 15% higher disability rates.
- Smoking causes millions of dollars of damage each year, due to fires. Between 1993 and 1996 the National Fire Protection Association reported $391 million in direct damage caused by smoking-related fires. While many of these fires occur in the home, some do occur in the workplace. Moreover, an employee who has just set his house afire is not going to be in the best shape emotionally.
- In general, employees who smoke are less productive than non-smokers because they have less energy, are sick more often, and take more breaks in order to contend with the demands of nicotine addiction.
So much for the costs to corporations. Most people know that smoking is bad for one’s health. However, most people don’t realize just how bad smoking really is. Here are some sobering facts and statistics should make anyone think twice about smoking.
- Smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the U.S. and accounts for 20% of all deaths in the U.S. annually. The Centers for Disease Control report that smoking causes approximately 440,000 premature deaths in the U.S. annually and approximately $157 billion in health-related economic losses.
- In the 1990s, smoking was estimated to cause one in five male deaths from cardiovascular diseases in developed countries (and about 6% of female cardiovascular deaths).
- Smoking causes about one-sixth of all deaths in developed countries. This proportion is rising, because more women are taking up the habit. This means that about 200 million out of the 1.2 billion people living in developed countries will eventually be killed by tobacco.
- Smoking causes about 30% of all cancer deaths in developed countries (40-45% of male cancer deaths, and 10-15% of female cancer deaths). On average, about 90-95% of male lung cancer deaths in developed countries, and 70-75% of female lung cancer deaths are due to smoking.
- In 1995, the World Health Organization estimated that smoking was the cause of about 1.44 million male deaths in developed countries, and 475,000 female deaths in these countries. This represents one in four male deaths and about 10% of female deaths.
- Between 1950 and 2000, tobacco was estimated as the cause of over 60 million deaths in developed countries (52 million men, 10 million women).
- On the average, adult smokers lose 20-25 years of life expectancy.
- Smokers in their 30s and 40s have five times as many heart attacks as non-smokers in this age group. In industrialized countries, tobacco is responsible for 75% to 80% of all heart attacks in smokers under age 50.
10 Hiring Tips for Small Business Owners
Whether your goal for 2005 is to find more time for family or personal enrichment –like attending classes and conferences — you’ll want to consider bringing on some help.
The following tips can help you get started whether you want to bring on a team of 10 or an occasional backup!
- Don’t expect to hire a replica of you!
- Know exactly what you expect from your new hire.
- Determine what type of manager you are! It’s imperative that you’re honest about your work style.
- Set aside time.
- Ask your insurance carrier about your responsibility for insuring your team members.
- Determine your time-off policy.
- Create a disciplinary and review process.
- Find a reputable company for conducting background checks.
- Create a Fact Sheet for Applicants that you can provide along with an application to interested candidates.
- Create your training program.
By following these tips, you are well on your way to a happy and productive working relationship with all your new help!
Five Tax Breaks For At-Home Entrepreneurs
By the Census Bureau’s last count in 2002, half of all businesses in the U.S. are home-based. The U.S. government encourages this kind of entrepreneurship. Dig deep and at-home entrepreneurs will find a few precious tax deductions.
Alterations to the tax code in 1999 made it easier to qualify for home-office tax deductions. Below are five deductions homebodies would be foolish to ignore. To increase your odds of success, be sure to keep your business and personal life separate–including all checking accounts, credit cards and phone bills.
1. Infrastructure (utilities, phone service, housekeeping services, landscaping) Run-of-the-mill homeowners and renters can’t deduct these expenses, but at-home entrepreneurs can.
2. Home mortgage interest and property taxes. U.S. taxpayers can deduct these anyway, but as a small business owner, you can save even more by applying a percentage of mortgage interest and property taxes to the home-office section of your tax form.
3. Travel expenses. You can’t deduct fuel expenses if you commute to work each day, but if you work from home, you can deduct the costs of traveling away from your home for any business-related activity.
4. One-time office equipment purchases. Section 179 of the tax code says you can take a one-time deduction–up to $105,000–for the purchase of office equipment, as long as you don’t purchase more than $400,000 of equipment in a calendar year.
5. Family affair. Sole proprietors with children under 18 who work for them can deduct their children’s “wages.”
Selling Online Faster With Vflyer
vFlyer is a classified ad creation, management and submission platform that enables online sellers to quickly and easily create attractive classified ads or “virtual flyers” that can posted on dozens of leading online marketplaces in a few simple clicks. Our goal is make classified ads as easy and effective as possible for individuals and businesses selling online.
One of the keys to selling online is a nice, effective, clean ad. If an ad is laid out nicely with all of the appropriate information, possible buyers are more likely to read it, and consider your product or service.
Users choose their specific category, collect and create the ad, and vFlyer helps you submit it to search engines and marketplaces, like Google Base and Edgeio. vFlyer generates HTML, and PDF’s that can pasted in sites like eBay and Craigslist, and printed out.
FreshBooks – Billings made easy
FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional – Fortune 500 professional. FreshBooks is easy to use and you can try it for free.
Features
- Easily create, send and manage invoices
- Track time (for you and your staff)
- Send invoices by email or US post GET A FREE SAMPLE
- Accept payment with PayPal, Authorize.Net, & more
- Automatically send invoices & late payment notices
- Create robust reports and import/export your data
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Online Database of Busted “Meth Houses†Before Investing or Buying
Health officials in a handful of states are warning home-buyers and renters to check an online database of busted “meth houses” to make sure they don’t move into a contaminated former drug lab.
The state estimates cleanup costs of $15,000 to $30,000 to decontaminate a 2,000-square-foot house.
Known for its high rate of addiction and severe side effects, which include rotten teeth and increased risk of heart, lung and liver disease, meth easily can be made with over-the-counter cold medication, household chemicals and a hot plate or burner. Every pound of meth cooked results in up to five to seven pounds of toxic chemical wastes that pose serious health and environmental hazards, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
It’s illegal in 12 states (Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington) for anyone to live in a former meth house before it’s been decontaminated, according to the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws, a congressionally funded nonprofit that helps states set drug laws.
Here are a few databases for Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington.
