If you’re insanely wealthy, hold on to your seat: the Internal Revenue Service is out to get you. That is, if you have been scamming Uncle Sam. Last tax season it was made apparent that the IRS was leaner, meaner, and that it was on the lookout for tax evaders. This past fall, the IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman announced something called a “Global High Wealth Exam Group.” The main task of this group is to make sure that the richest people in America are paying what they owe in taxes.

If you own a nice house in a nice neighborhood, you don’t have to worry. When they say “global wealth” they MEAN global wealth. Like, so wealthy that you would not even be reading this yourself, you would be paying a servant to read it to you. People with incomes in the tens of millions of dollars. According to the most current IRS information, in the year of 2004 there were about 47,000 individual taxpayers with a net worth of $20,000,000 or more.

This past year the news presented us with many articles about the wealthiest people in the country stashing assets in offshore accounts to prevent their massive stacks of cash from being proportionately, and legally, taxed. In fact, by last November, almost 15,000 individuals had “voluntarily” reported their illegal activity to the IRS. That just goes to show you that if you make enough money, you can buy the prerogative to avoid going to jail for breaking the law by being forced to volunteer financial information.

The disturbing, selfish behavior of some of the richest individuals in the nation is not the only reason for this new program. When a person reaches a certain category of wealth, things get more complicated with trust arrangements, private equity and hedge funds, private foundations, and multi-tiered partnerships. Also, the world has gotten smaller, and many of these entities are foreign based which complicates things for the IRS further. It makes sense that it would take a team of experts to tease all of these issues out.

Hence, the “wealth squads” came out in part this tax season, manned with entire teams of IRS agents, partnership experts and international examiners. Specialists in the areas of retirement plans, insurance and annuity arrangements, exempt organizations, and financial instruments will be introduced to go through the Forms 1040 AND any and all related returns. The Internal Revenue Service informs us that a criminal investigation agent might potentially be asked to join the task force.

So what are these poor, defenseless multi-millionaires to do? Well, if they have been honest in the past and paid the fair amount of money that they owed to the nation, they have no reason to be concerned. For the rest, it may have appeared to be a good idea to walk on the wild side of audits a few years ago, but now it doesn’t seem like such a smart decision.

Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solutions and writes articles on new york collection agencies This article, IRS Vows To Make The Wealthiest Of The Wealthy Pay Their Dues has free reprint rights.

If you were paying attention in your economics class, you might have heard the phrase “stocks and bonds” thrown around a few times. Stocks and bonds are both securities (a security is a negotiable “instrument” that represents financial value), and thus both stocks and bonds can be used to finance a company and company activities. However, there are major differences between stocks and bonds.

A bond can loosely be defined as a contract to repay borrowed money along with interest at set dates. An authorized issuer will owe holders a debt, and most of the time will need to pay interest and the principal at a later date. This later date is called maturity. So, you can see that a bond is a lot like a loan, the issuer is the borrower, the holder is the lender (the creditor) and the coupon is the interest. Bonds are repaid at fixed intervals over a period of time.

Stocks and bonds differ because stockholders share a fraction of ownership in the company, whereas bondholders are creditors to the company. Another difference between stocks and bonds is that bonds typically have a set time span in which the bond will mature, whereas stocks have the capacity to be outstanding indefinitely.

Bonds will be issued by companies, credit institutions, and public authorities. The most popular way to issue bonds is through a process called underwriting. This is when one or more banks purchases an entire issue of bonds from an issuer and re-sells them to investors. People called bookrunners arrange this, talking directly with investors and advising the bond issuer about the price and timing of the bond issue.

All bonds have many of common features. A bond will have what is called a nominal (principal or face) amount, which is the sum of money on which the issuer pays interest. A few types of bonds can be redeemed for a different amount than what they were issued for and may be linked to performance of certain assets like a stock index, foreign exchange or a fund. This can sometimes result in an investor getting less or more than her original investment when the bond matures. To be continued in part two

Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution and writes articles on medical collection agencies. Also published at Understanding Bonds For Beginners Part One.

Companies generally flourish when they build relationships with their clients that has a foundation on trust. Yet sometimes customers do fall behind in payments to purchase goods or services that they have received. There are a number of ways to attack this issue.

First of all, gather an inventory of your receivables. By doing this you will be able to track the trends in your customer’s payment histories. It is a good idea to review your accounts receivable at least once a month. To help you, use accounting software programs that can give you this information in a report that tracks the age of your receivables. This will aid you in avoiding accounts that eventually become debts that are uncollectible.

Some of the time, the consumer may be capable and ready to pay up, but your invoice has gotten lost or has fell to the bottom of their finances pile. It’s a good idea to send out monthly statements that recount the status of your consumer’s accounts to update them on what is owed.

If an account still remains outstanding, don’t be scared to call them personally and inform them them know that you are expecting a payment.

If your attempts to remind your consumers of the bill don’t succeed, stronger action might be needed. Mail the customer a demand letter that contains documentation of the fact that your company has delivered goods and that the client was billed for them. Let them know that they are now in breach of contract. In the letter, state when payment is required before further action is taken, and what your next step will be.

Typically the next step will be to take legal action. If it is a small amount of money you can take your case to a small claims court. For a large amount you should take the case to civil court. Be sure to document the agreement between you and the customer and that you pulled your weight by delivering the promised goods or services.

Rapid Recovery Solution is a third party debt collection agency.