Part of bootstrapping a startup is to learn every aspect of running a business, from paying taxes to SEO, from social media to server setup! In a nutshell, do it all yourself!

One of the most confusing things is paying taxes and there are so many datelines. It’s SO important not to miss a dateline because IRS is seizing every moment to fine you a penalty.

These are important datelines for a Delaware Corporation run in the State of CA.

Mar 1st
State of Delaware - Due date to file an Annual Report and pay franchise tax
http://corp.delaware.gov/frtax.shtml

There are 2 ways to calculate Delaware franchise tax. Most corporations would use the Assumed Par Value Capital Method unless their authorized shares have no par value.

In order to use the Assumed Par Value Capital Method, you’ll need 3 important numbers

- Total Gross Assets,

- Total Authorized Shares (aka maximum number of shares a company can issue)

- Par value of the authorized shares.

Total Gross Assets is the “total assets” reported on the U.S. Form 1120, Schedule L (Federal Tax Return form) for the relevant tax year.

Because of this, it’s essential to get Corporate Tax (both Federal and State) completed before Mar 1st even though the dateline to file Corporate Tax is Mar 15.

DE Quarterly Tax Due Dates

If DE taxes is $5,000 or more, then quarterly taxes are due on 6/1, 9/1, 12/1, 3/1

Federal and State Quarterly Tax Due Dates
Quarterly taxes are due 4/15, 6/15, 9/15, 12/15

Where to pay online?
Delaware Franchise Tax - http://corp.delaware.gov/achChgInfo.shtml
Federal Tax, EFTPS Online - https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/
It’s cool that you can schedule federal quarterly tax deduction in advance so that you can set it up once and forget about it for the year.
California Franchise Tax - http://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/payment_choices.shtml

My corporation didn’t make any money, do I still have to pay and file taxes?

YES, you do! Even when the corporation makes a loss, it’s mandatory to pay CA and DE minimum franchise tax. As of writing, here are the minimums:

CA - $800 franchise tax

DE - $75 franchise tax + $50 annual filing fee 

Photo By: alancleaver_2000

It’s really easy to setup a many-to-many relationships in Rails. There are 2 ways of doing this:

1) has_and_belongs_to_many association

2) has_many :through

I’m not going to touch on the details of each because there’s great documentation provided in the above links. However, I do want to point out the flaws and limitations of has_and_belongs_to_many association.

Like in this example,

Photo Credit: http://guides.rubyonrails.org

the way to connect the assemblies and parts models is to create a table (named after both models, assemblies_parts) with 2 columns, assembly_id and part_id. It’s a table not a model. It’s definitely much easier to create a has_and_belongs_to_many association than has_many :through but  has_and_belongs_to_many association doesn’t work in most real life situations.

1) Notice there’s no id column in the assemblies_parts model? Because of this, there’s no way to add additional attribute to this table. Let’s say you want to know which assembly/part combination is the most popular. In a has_and_belongs_to_many association, you can’t add an additional attribute, e.g. popular_count to the table.

2) As there’s no model created, there’s no way to add validations or callbacks in a has_and_belongs_to_many setup.

I learned it the hard way and had to convert my code from has_and_belongs_to_many to has_many :through. As your app gets more complicated with rules and processes, make sure your associations is setup in a way that’s flexible enough to incorporate the changes easily. Moving forward,  my choice is to always use has_many :through because I don’t want to create road blocks for myself down the road.

Here are some interesting stats on the online porn industry, shared by the folks at OnlineMBA.com. The industry is worth $5 BILLION and surprising enough, UTAH leads the WAY!

Via: Online MBA