Home Based Business is one of the few legal tax shelters left

Sandy Botkin: First of all, understand something: We have two tax systems in this country. [Many] times people think there's one for rich and one for poor. That is a huge myth. What the systems are is one for employees--people who don't know the rules, which are designed to take your wealth--and one for self-employed people, [the rules of] which are designed to create economic growth. The reason for that is, small business generates over 70 percent of the jobs in this country. So Congress passes good tax laws. And there are good tax laws--let me emphasize this--for small business. Let's say your business generates a loss. If that loss exceeds the income from that business, you can use that loss against any form of income you have: interest, dividends, rents, wages, pensions, anything. Say you make $50,000 in salary and you have a small business that creates a $10,000 loss. You only pay tax on $40,000. Let's say the loss exceeds your whole income. You can carry back all business losses in 2002 five years and actually get a refund from the last five years' federal and state income tax you paid. In 2003, by the way, that number is going down to two years. Or you can carry forward all business losses 20 years and offset the next 20 years of earning. So you never lose a properly documented business deduction.