One big tax guideAt 11:59 p.m. on April 16, as the world is crumbling around you, few things will offer as much comfort as a giant, comprehensive, reliable tax guide - something like RIA's Federal Tax Handbook 2006.
This cinder-block of a book can serve as the cornerstone of an accurate tax practice, with coverage of the latest tax topics and changes, and will prove a handy reference after tax season, as well.
Price: $61.95. Volume discounts available.
Thomson RIA
http://ria.thomson.com
(800) 950-1216
More on taxes
Before Congress wrote the Section 199 domestic production activities deduction, the tax breaks we gave U.S. manufacturers only annoyed our international trading partners. Now they're driving our manufacturers crazy, along with our tax preparers. The Section 199 rules are so complicated that CCH has published a new book, Practical Guide to the Sec. 199 Deduction, in hopes of clearing things up, and keeping domestic manufacturers from launching a trade war against the IRS.
The book offers straightforward explanations of how the deduction works (which we previously hadn't thought was possible), explains the latest rules and offers extensive examples. Once you have gone through it, we can get back to hating the European Union.
Price: $95. Quantity discounts available.
CCH
http://tax.cchgroup.com
'Offshoring Opportunities'
Offshoring is like the weather - everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it. That may be because a great many companies are finding that it pays off, though they probably don't want to trumpet the fact. Much like the weather, offshoring offers both promise and threat.
Fulfilling the promise and avoiding the threat is what Offshoring Opportunities: Strategies and Tactics for Global Competitiveness is all about. It provides a framework for determining if your company can benefit from offshoring, and offers valuable advice on how to manage it. With plenty of real-life case studies, the book eschews polemics in favor of sound business thinking - regardless of whether you offshore or not.
Price: $45.
John Wiley & Sons
www.wiley.com
(800) 762-2974
Small, but wiry
Size, in the end, is meaningless. Goliath gets knocked down by a pebble, GM struggles to give cars away, and Enron definitely isn't the seventh-largest company in America anymore. The point, according to Bigger Isn't Always Better, is that having high revenue figures and bloated staff numbers doesn't actually mean you're growing - it just means you're getting bigger.
Real growth, the book contends, is about innovation, change and serving your markets better, which can happen at any size company - and may, in fact, be harder at a large one. With plenty of real-life examples, research and analysis, Bigger Isn't Always Better aims to show businesses how to achieve sustainable, high-quality growth, whatever their size.
Price: $24.95.
Amacom
www.amacombooks.org
(800) 714-6395
'The Ultimate Question'
In a lifetime of looking at business books (well, it feels like a lifetime; really, it's just the past 20 minutes), we have learned one thing: It's the subtitles that matter. As a case in point, we offer The Ultimate Question. Despite what the title might lead you to believe, the subtitle, Driving Good Profits and True Growth, should make it abundantly clear that the book is not about man's place in the universe, how to live a meaningful life, or even where to find the best slice of pizza in New York.
Don't let that dissuade you from reading it, though, because its grandiose title is both honest - the book is about a question that is, in its field, the ultimate one - and extraordinarily insightful. The field is growing your business through customer relationships, and the question is, "Would you recommend us to a friend?" Former Bain director Fred Reichheld takes this simple question, and from it builds a whole system for turning your customers into your promoters. If we had our way, his "Net Promoter Score" metric would be mandatorily imposed on all companies, particularly those that call us around dinnertime.
Price: $24.95.
Harvard Business
School Press
www.hbspress.org
