These gains don't cause pain. A capital gain is the amount of money you pocket by selling one of your investments for more than you paid for it. Technically, capital gains only count for what's called a capital asset, but that's really just anything you own for investment purposes. Stocks and bonds obviously qualify, but your house and household furnishings can also count.

For tax purposes, capital gains are classified as either long-term (held for more than one year) or short-term (held for less than one year) and there are different tax implications for how long you hold onto a capital asset. For most long-term capital gains, you're taxed no more than 15% of the value of the asset. Short-term gains get taxed as regular income, so you pay the rate for the tax bracket you're in.

Capital gains can also be realized or unrealized. When you physically sell an asset like a stock, you've realized the capital gain. When you're holding the stock, and it has a value over its purchase price, but you're not selling it, you've got an unrealized gain, and you won't realize it until you sell.

In a perfect world, we'd all have capital gains. But no one¿s that smart or lucky. When the value of an asset at sale is below what you've paid for it, it's called a capital loss. The good news is that the government lets you count that loss against any gains you've had, lowering the taxes you pay. In fact, many people who sell a stock that has risen far over their purchase price tend to sell some stinkers, too, at the same time for the tax benefit. This is known as a capital-loss offset.

Home / Personal Finance / On Topic / Small Business

Friday, August 08, 2008

What's in a Name?

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Cornelia Rowe

FOXBusiness

Business Naming, On Topic, Small Busines

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You will spend the next few years growing and nurturing it. You will hope that it will develop into something strong, something in which you will see a return on your emotional and financial investments. It is essential that you give it just the right name.

That’s right – your baby: your small business.

Small business is On Topic at FOXBusiness.com in August. Check back every day to read stories about how to start, build and enhance your small business.

“You can communicate so much with a great name for your company or product,” said James Singer, creative director at Name Base, a national brand-naming consulting firm. “A great name becomes its own advertisement and can save you millions in marketing dollars.”

If you’re starting up a small business, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is what to name it. Not only is it vital in conveying what product or service you’re offering, it’s a major factor in creating brand awareness.

Obviously, you'll want a catchy name. But what are some other things to take into consideration when it comes to christening your business? Here are a few tips.

Play up your company's unique selling proposition. The name should stress what your company is selling.

“It makes it so much easier on potential customers if you build the unique selling proposition of your company into your business name,” said Joe Kennedy, the author of The Small Business Owner’s Manual: Everything You Need To Know To Start Up and Run Your Small Business.

A moniker that’s direct and to-the-point will be advantageous when attracting clientele through the Web or search listings. “When people get on the internet, they expect information right away,” said Kennedy. “I’ve you’ve embedded (the unique selling proposition) into the name, it sure makes it easier on people.”

Case in point: clients surfing the ‘net or thumbing through the Yellow Pages in search of a plumber will find you faster and easier if ‘plumbing’ is in your name.

And while we’re speaking of the Internet….

Be conscious of how it will look online. What this boils down to is thinking about what your business’s name will look when you type it as a web address. It’s that simple.

Exhibit A: Powergen, a UK power company that was rumored to have bought this domain for its Italian division: www.powergenitalia.com. (To be fair, after much giggling in the British Press, a Powergen rep claimed the company had nothing to do with purchasing the domain.)

Or TherapistFinder, a company tailored to helping people find therapists in California. It’d be easy to get the wrong idea when typing in www.therapistfinder.com.

And ending your business with the word ‘exchange’ is a naming don’t. Domain Rookie, a web company dedicated to helping people invest in domains, has a whole list of businesses whose web addresses could be awkwardly misconstrued: Homes Exchange (www.homesexchange.com), Experts Exchange (www.expertsexchange), and MomsExchange (www.momsexchange.com) just to name a few.

And while we’re having fun with this, Who Represents – an online company that puts customers in touch with celebrity representation– might want to reconsider www.whorepresents.com.

Avoid consumer confusion. “You don’t want your name to be similar to someone else’s or someone might associate it with another company," said Darius Keyhani, a member of the intellectual property law firm of Meredith and Keyhani. “That could be actionable and constitute as trademark infringement.”

Keyhani said the first thing you should do is check with your Secretary of State to see corporate filings of trademark requests and make sure no one else has your name or one similar. “You can also hire a search company and do a search of the marks,” he said. “Do a search all over the United States and make sure nobody else is using your name and using the same mark in association with the services.”

Forget acronyms. Until you’re a Fortune 500 company that everybody is familiar with, acronyms are instantly forgettable. ‘Don’t use an acronym unless it evolves organically,’ said Singer.

"For instance, IBM – International Business Machine. Their customers started calling it IBM, they didn’t come out and announce that’s what they were called. And GE, of course. In those cases, it’s fine. But otherwise, you’re just going to get lost in alphabet soup."

Be visual. The best names are ones that bring images to mind when you hear them. Even for products and services that aren’t necessarily visually-oriented, having a name with an associative image can go a long way toward raising your company's profile.

“You want to find something that’s catchy, neat…something that might be well-liked or create the kind of feeling or conception that you want in a market that you’re trying to attract,” said Keyhani. “The name should not be descriptive of what you’re providing, but have a creative sense. Like Viagra – it plays off of Niagara. They were playing off associations with the waterfall.”

Pay attention to phonetic strength. Small phonetic nuances can also be helpful. Naming experts say that plosives - words that sound almost like a small explosion via p, k or t sounds – catch the ears of listeners.

“Kodak starts with a plosive and ends with a plosive,’ said Singer. ‘And it has bright vowels in the middle, so it’s a beautifully coined word. And it has that dactylic rhythm – the first syllable is stressed. So that’s a good device when trying to make sure the name is memorable and has strength. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, it can mean a lot on a subliminal level, an emotional level.’

Consider unconventional naming methods. Laugh all you want at this one – but remember, it was JP Morgan who said “millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do.”

Lloyd Strayhorn, author of Numbers and You: A Numerology Guide for Everyday Living, has used both astrology and numerology to help name small businesses. For instance, for a New Jersey real estate developer who was just starting out, Strayhorn and his client came up with DL Moore Developers, which had corresponding numbers that added up to 8. According to Strayhorn, 8 is a number that rules real estate and banks.

“Most clients that have come me will have names that they have in mind and what I’ll do is numerically analyze the names to see if they are in sync with the individual, and more importantly, with what they’re doing,” said Strayhorn. “Its challenging enough to stay afloat, but why stay afloat with a name that works against you?”