II. Answer the following questions:

1. If tight financial markets are cramping your company's style, is it time to take a hard look at cost control?

2. Is it tough to find a business (or individual) consumer whose shopping patterns haven't been changed by the giant mall out in cyberspace?

3. How can taking advantage of group-purchasing discounts help your business?

4. Why is it important to find ways to audit significant operating expenses?

5. Should you keep hiring costs low?

6. Can you sometimes, just say no?

7. How can you think holistically?

III. Rewrite the sentences using the words and word-combinations from the text instead of the underlined ones.

1. If you are willing to get things moving in your company, try to focus on how to cut and keep low fees.

2. According to the last economic research, market environment is favorable for opening a number of subsidiaries in the Third World countries.

3. Those who count on debit cards can be confident that they are not going to waste their time with cash when shopping.

4. The McMillan’s Inc. has just modernized their buy-on-line system, and now merchandise is available in the remote corners of the country.

5. Only one specific sort of auditors is invited to inspect corporate financial crimes.

6. The crisis just emphasized the necessity of new ways of escalating the output.

IV. Fill in the gaps with the words or word-combinations from the list.

a) reduce the percentage f) certified public accountant

b) qualms g) implausibly

c) modest salaries h) individual taxes

d) to nail i) inflate your compensation

e) employment taxes

When it comes to salary, many business owners have no 1)______about paying themselves a hefty amount. What many owners fail to recognize, however, is that you can get into big trouble at tax time if you 2)____________.

Say you own a C corporation with $500,000 in profits (in other words, taxable income). You might be tempted to reduce that profit - and thus 3)__________of it you have to pay Uncle Sam - by giving yourself a well-deserved six-digit year-end bonus.

Although that practice may not seem like a crime, the IRS is wary of such behavior, especially if it 4)____________inflates an owner's salary given the business's size and industry. However, Richard M. Colombik, a lawyer and 5)_____________who runs International Tax Associates, in Schaumburg, Ill., stresses that you really need to be concerned only if you're paying yourself a mega salary. "It's rare that I've seen salaries of less than $500,000 get challenged," he says.

But that doesn't mean owners with 6)____________have nothing to fear. If you are the sole owner of an S corporation, you can also run afoul of the IRS for paying yourself too little. "There is an incentive to minimize compensation in order to save on 7)__________," says Steven Paul, a tax lawyer at Palmer & Dodge, in Boston. But this offense seldom triggers an audit for two reasons. First, owners of S corporations rarely do it, since they know that the government is going to 8)________them on their 9)______________anyway. Second, if the salary is equal to or over the FICA ceiling of $76,200, the IRS stands to recover only 2.9% of the excess, so it's probably not worth the agency's time.