Recently in Financing Category

Mobile payment services like Square and LevelUp are all the rage with pop-up cafes and micro-businesses, but are they right for established small businesses?

Attaching a portable credit-card reader to your smartphone or tablet may seem like the right call, but doing so also raises a few legal concerns -- such hackers potentially swiping customers' credit-card info.

Here are five legal tips for any business owner considering mobile payments:

A new study is adding to the growing body of evidence that the playing field for entrepreneurs is tilted depending on the color of their skin.

A research paper released by the Small Business Administration finds that black and Hispanic entrepreneurs face greater difficulty than ever in securing business loans, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

Here are some of the study's key findings:

Small business owners rejoice: It looks like getting a loan from the Small Business Administration may soon be within anyone's reach.

The SBA offers loans to small business owners as an alternative to bank loans and other financing options. But landing one of those loans required a lot of paperwork, and not everyone could qualify.

At least, that was the case before Karen Mills, the outgoing SBA chief, broke the news on changes to the program, the Jacksonville Business Journal reports. And it's all good news.

Here's what's being proposed:

Here's an interesting question for small start-up companies:

If you're the sole founder in a company, do you have to write up a stock purchase agreement?

It's a good question for many reasons. For one, it's not one that every entrepreneur would think of asking. Many don't realize the importance of having stock purchase agreements drafted at the early stages.

Crowdfunding is the newest way to get a quick cash infusion, and potentially bring in more customers too. How can small business owners maximize its benefits?

It's not just a ploy for startups and small-time entrepreneurs who want to get a product to market. Thanks to the JOBS Act, crowdfunding can be used by any company to solicit donations or to find investors, a Forbes contributor writes.

This is all very new, and it can be hard to get a handle on which route to take. But if you keep these five tips in mind, you should be off to a good start:

Getting a small business loan can be extremely difficult in these tough economic times. Banks and other lenders are hesitant to loan to businesses that do not have a real track record of profits.

So if you are just starting your business or looking to expand, your requests for financing may fall on deaf ears. Still, just because it is difficult to get a small business loan doesn't mean it's impossible.

To put yourself in a better position to get a loan, here are five tips you may want to consider:

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act came into being in April but companies are still waiting for the SEC to publish their eagerly awaited crowdfunding rules.

A provision of the JOBS act allows startups to raise funds through funding portals by selling shares directly to investors. Traditionally companies were required to sell shares only through an established broker-dealer which left many small and new companies out in the cold.

The JOBS act authorized it but until the SEC publishes its rules, companies have no way to register as funding portals. But crowdfunding is still happening.

There are two ways taxes can go up: either through actual increases or the end of tax breaks and the latter is about to happen to employees.

Every worker pays Social Security payroll taxes with every check that's cut. But the current amount of those taxes is actually slightly lower than the real value. The reason is a payroll tax cut initiated by President Obama in 2011.

The tax cut decreased workers' shares of the Social Security tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. But that cut is set to expire at the end of this year.

Is your small business reeling from the economic effects of a recent disaster? If so, you may qualify for a small business disaster loan to help get you and your business back on your feet.

A small business doesn't have to be physically damaged in order to qualify for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the Small Business Administration. These loans focus solely on how cash-strapped a business is, not how much physical damage it's suffered.

How much money is at stake? It depends on the scope of the disaster. For example, after Hurricane Isaac slammed parts of the Gulf Coast last month, the SBA approved $1.4 million in disaster loans for residents and businesses in Mississippi, according to the Associated Press.

How do you get an Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the SBA? Here are some general guidelines:

Congress has proposed increasing the minimum wage and that has left small business owners divided on whether the move could help or hurt.

The bill would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $9.80. That's the hourly equivalent of $20,000 per year, reports The Motley Fool. The bill also proposes upping the base hourly pay for tipped employees from $2.13 to $6.86 over the next several years by increasing it $0.85 per year.

That could add up to a lot in increased salary costs but it's not necessarily a bad change for small businesses.