Part A- Loans
Congratulations! You are a proud owner of an engraving business. However, you are using an aging rotary engraver to engrave plaques and trophies. The machine has been reliable, but does require regular maintenance and periodic replacement of parts. You have just found out that this engraver will no longer be supported by the manufacturer. This means that service and parts will be hard to get in the future and if it breaks it could take up to three weeks to get a new one up and running. You keep this machine running almost 8 hours a day, every day. Every day that the engraver is down will cost around $975 in lost income.
If you have to buy a new engraver, it would cost around $25,000.
You can get a one-year loan at 12% to buy a new engraver, but you worry that this is a lot of money to spend, especially since the old engraver is still working fine. You have to make a decision.
In this discussion, pose you argument on whether you should purchase a new engraver now or wait until the old engraver breaks before ordering a new engraver?
To help you construct your argument answer the following steps:
1. The local bank will loan you $25,000 for 1 year at an interest rate of 12% with only one payment due at the end of the year. If you borrow the full $25,000 for the new engraver, what will the total cost of the loan be?
2. Calculate the total amount of revenue (gross profit) that will be lost if the engraver breaks and is down for 18 business days.
3. If the engraving business makes $975 per day in revenue and generates a net profit of 25%, how much profit is generated per day?
4. Given a 25% profit margin and $975 per day in revenue, how many days would it take for the new engraver to earn back the total cost of purchase, if the entire net profit were allocated to pay for the unit?
What other factors should you consider in order to make a good business decision?
Part B- Taxes
Taxes are part of all are lives. In this discussion you have the opportunity to look at one particular type of tax. Choose between finding property tax, sales tax or income tax. Share your thoughts on paying taxes and post your answers to one of the three questions listed below.
Calculating Property Tax Go to http://www.dat.state.md.us/sdatweb/taxrate.html. What would be the county tax on a property in Dorchester subdivision assessed at $240,000? In Allegany subdivision, what would be the difference in county property tax on a $400,000 property in Barton and one in Frostburg?
Calculating Sales Tax Go to http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/. It's August and you need to buy school clothes and supplies for your five children. You live in the northwestern corner of Connecticut, within easy driving distance of both Massachusetts and New York State. What would the sales tax in each state be on a total of $830 worth of purchases? If shopping outside the state would cost around $20 in gas, in which state would this shopping trip cost the least?
Calculating Income Tax: Married Couple Go to www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf. The 2010 tax tables (or current year) will come up as a pdf file. What is the tax for a head of household with a taxable income of $31,430? How much tax would a married couple filing jointly pay on $66,980? What about if they filed separately?