Levine, Jacobs & Company, LLC, Senior Member Discusses Taxes on 401(k) Withdrawals

Michael H. Karu, CPA/CFF, Senior Member, Levine, Jacobs & Company, LLC., was highlighted on NJ.com for providing clarity on the impact of one’s residency status affects state and federal taxes regarding their 401(k).

In the article, Karu discussed if a New Jersey couple retires and moves to Florida, would they have to pay taxes on their 401(k) and should taxes be filed separately to prevent ‘IRS red flags’.

Karu stated, “Withdrawals from a 401(k) will be federally taxable regardless of what state you live in. But there is a caveat in the law that allows for spouses residing in separate states to file as married filing jointly for federal tax purposes and married filing separately for state tax purposes”.

Karu also recommended that once one moves to a different state, they should change their personal information as soon as possible such as their driver’s license, voter registration, license plates, and address on bank statements. He emphasized it’s very important to keep a log to track this information for when tax season comes.

Additionally, Karu said, “As far as any federal ‘red flags,’ the IRS does not care where taxpayers live. Federal law is federal law. Only the states care, and residency is based on when a person moves in and out of a state.”

To read the articles, please click here.

To speak with and/or set up an interview with Michael Karu, please contact Amy Delman, Amy Delman Public Relations, LLC, 201.563.4614 or amydelmanpr@verizon.net.

Michael H. Karu, CPA/CFF, is a senior member of Levine, Jacobs & Company, LLC, a Livingston-based accounting and consulting firm.  He is qualified by the Superior Court of New Jersey, Family Part, as an expert witness and as an authority on business valuations, specifically for closely held or family-owned businesses.  Additionally, he is a Certified Divorce Mediator and is Certified in Financial Forensics.

Karu received his B.S. degree in Business Administration from The Ohio State University and holds professional memberships in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the AICPA Tax Division and the AICPA Business Valuation, Forensics and Litigation Services Section, as well as the NJ State Society of CPAs. Karu is a published author of numerous articles seen in trade and consumer publications and has been a guest on radio and television shows.

Levine, Jacobs & Company, L.L.C. maintains memberships in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants. The firm prides itself on its teamwork abilities where “every account receives the talent and expertise of the whole firm.”

WATI raises $23M in series B, powering WhatsApp for businesses in India and other regions

WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox), a customer and sales engagement tool is today announcing a $23M series B funding, led by Tiger Global with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, as well as new investors DST Global Partners and Shopify. This marks Shopify’s first venture investment in a startup operating in the Southeast Asia region. The series B comes hot on the heels of an $8.3M series A round 10 months ago; in total, WATI has raised over $35M since 2020. WATI plans to use the Series B funds to scale the teams, product enhancement, and expand the customer base in India and key markets.

WATI has helped businesses power millions of conversations with thousands of customers across 78 countries in just 2 years since its launch. India continues to be WATI’s single largest individual market, with a third of its customers based out of the country. WATI has become an indispensable tool for startups to SMBs, and is deployed by businesses across verticals like e-commerce, healthcare, education, fashion, finance, professional service, and public services. Since its last round, WATI has grown its Indian customer base by 60%. Over the next few quarters, India will remain a critical focus for WATI both in terms of deepening market reach and tapa

Over 2 billion people around the world use WhatsApp to communicate everyday things and it is little wonder that businesses are taking to the messaging platform to support their customers where they feel most comfortable. In 2020, founders, Bianca Ho and Ken Yeung, launched WATI to help SMB with a self-service, low-code product on the WhatsApp Business API. WATI enables companies to have scalable, yet personalised conversations with its customer engagement software that is built on WhatsApp’s Business API. WATI’s vision is to help businesses meet their customers where they are – on messaging platforms – so they are always accessible, personalised, and can engage in real-time. Through the WATI platform, SMBs can support their customers through a collaborative team inbox with multiple agents, smart routing, canned responses, data tagging, and analytics. Many of these interactions can be automated through low-code workflow builders and chatbots.

Bianca Ho, Co-Founder, WATI commented: “It’s been an exciting 2022 at WATI culminating with this new funding round. We doubled down on our product with more automations, making it a seamless digital tool and must-have for any business. We went vertical in our approach and created integrations and partnerships with Zoho, Shopify, Google Sheets among others to really help scale growth and sharpen the product. The team has grown, revenue and customer numbers have doubled and now we look to scale the business, operations, teams around the world.”

This year, WATI has grown its remote-first team by 50%, attracting leaders from Twitter and Freshworks. Revenues and customer growth have doubled in the past 12 months as users find ROI in both time saved and increased revenue from automated workflows connected to eCommerce platforms and CRMs. WATI has over 6000 customers across 78 countries including SMBs providing domestic house cleaning services to schools, tutorial centres, medical institutions and ecommerce, Shopify stores and many more.

Currently, India has the highest number of WATI employees in any single market, across departments – Customer Success, Support, Partnerships, Marketing, Engineering, Product, etc. The company plans to increase the India headcount by 30%, in line with the growth of its revenues globally.

Ken Yeung, Co-Founder WATI, said “The business messaging market has grown enormously. Meta estimates that around a billion people per week communicate with a business or service account across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. This insight is critical for what’s happening now and what’s coming ahead. About 40% of Meta’s advertisers globally – over 4 million businesses – use click-to-message ads, which redirect people from Facebook or Instagram into one of Meta’s messaging products to chat with a business. WATI is well placed to service this demand and beyond.”

With additional funding, WATI will continually scale the team and invest in the product stack for low-code automation encouraging wider adoption of digital tools. WATI plans to scale sustainably in India and has aggressive go-to-market plans in emerging markets such as Latin America and Southeast Asia.

PaySprint, a Leading Fintech Venture Focussed on Next Gen Digital Banking Wins the “Best Fintech Start-up” Award at the FinTech India Innovation Awards 2022

PaySprint, a Leading Fintech Venture Focussed on Next Gen Digital Banking Wins the “Best Fintech Start-up” Award at the FinTech India Innovation Awards 2022

PaySprint is pioneering strong partnerships with the banking ecosystem to provide Unified Open API Platform that would transform how Bharat transacts
FinTech India Innovation Awards Celebrates Outstanding FinTech Technologies, Products and Companies in India

PaySprint, a Fintech venture focussed on Next Gen Digital Banking Solutions, offering a Unified Open API Platform, today announced that it has been named as the winner of the Best Fintech Start-up award in the annual FinTech India Innovation Awards 2022.

The annual FinTech India Innovation Awards 2022 is the premier awards program founded to recognize the FinTech innovators, leaders and visionaries from India in a range of categories, including best fintech leader, start-up, company, Best Use of AI in FinTech, FinTech Product of the Year and many more. FinTech sector has the potential to change the ways businesses function and make the dream of digital India materialize in the best possible way. FinTech India Innovation Awards recognizes and felicitates innovations and emerging technologies disrupting the financial sector.

“Being recognised as the best fintech start-up in India is a proud achievement, and a validation of our vision to Empower millions of Indians to transact thru Digital Banking. It is estimated that in the next 8 to 10 years India will completely transform from a branch banking to Digital banking and PaySprint will play a critical role in this transformation journey. Moreover, India  today supports disruptive transformation and leads the world in embracing new technologies that elevate business performance and people especially in the fintech space”, S.Anand added

About PaySprint

PaySprint is a Fintech venture focussed on Next Gen Digital  Banking Solutions, offering a Unified Open API Platform. PaySprint works closely with various banks to bring in Digital banking solutions to the end consumer. Banks will continue to be the custodian of the customer and of the various banking products and services, while PaySprint will create larger consumer adoption, interface and delight.

The Year 2020 saw India and Bharat coming to age on digital payments both on payments and acceptance. This has been purely been possible through JAM – JanDhan Accounts, Aadhar & Mobile / smartphone penetration. Keeping the above 3 as core and the need for better, faster & easier technological solutions, S Anand, CEO and co-founder launched PaySprint in 2020.

 

Aviva Life Insurance bags India’s Most Trusted Private Life Insurer Award 4th time consecutively

Aviva Life Insurance has been ranked as the India’s Most Trusted Private Life Insurance brand for the fourth time consecutively, according to the 11th edition of TRA’s Brand Trust Report, India Study 2022. Additionally, the company has been ranked eighth in the overall BFSI sector and 68th in a list of 1000 brands across sectors.

 

Commenting on the recognition, Mr. Vinit Kapahi, Head of Marketing, Aviva Life Insurance, said, “We are pleased to have won the Most Trusted Private Life Insurance Brand of the Year Award for the fourth time in a row. It is the continued belief of our customers and partners that has made us achieve this recognition. This award is a testament to our consistent customer-centric approach and our purpose ‘With you today, for a better tomorrow.’ Going ahead, we shall continue our endeavour to innovate while staying true to our customers’ needs.”

 

Aviva Life Insurance has retained trust amongst its customers despite the pressing times, by offering a range of life insurance products, including child, investments and retirement plans, etc.to fulfil the customers’ financial needs. Keeping its brand purpose into consideration, the company is dedicated to offering seamless and hassle-free life insurance solutions, since its inception.

 

Mr. N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research quoted that “Aviva Life Insurance has shown tremendous performance in gaining the trust of its customers by becoming Most Trusted Private Life Insurance Brand of India this year. While it has been a trusted leader among Private Life for four years consecutively, it is a sign of its customer responsiveness, engagement, and Trust. We are very happy to see them do so well in this study.”

 

Brand Trust 2022 is conducted by TRA, a consumer insights and brand analytics company that has been conducting this syndicated research for the last 10 years. This year the study was conducted through Face to Face mode amongst 1617 consumer influencers in 16 cities in India between Nov-Jan 2021.  This syndicated research arrives at a Brand trust score basis a comprehensive Brand Trust matrix which has been derived basis years of research and empirical data. Brand trust comprises of 3 foundations of trust: Building capacity to Trust, Building perception of Positive Intent and Demonstrating Relevant Competence. These foundations are based on 10 brand behaviours which are essentially business traits and combine to create the 3 foundations of brand trust matrix. Aviva Life Insurance India is a leading life insurer in India with a sustainable growth model. It is a joint venture between Dabur Invest Corp and Aviva International Holdings Limited, a UK-based insurance group that has been taking care of people for more than 325 years.

MAIT | Post Budget Statement

MAIT congratulates the Hon’ble Finance Minister for presenting a progressive investment-oriented budget.

MAIT congratulates the Hon’ble Finance Minister for the third successive year of emphasis on technology-led growth. This Digital transformation is silently and surely taking India to another orbit of economic efficiency.

Key takeaways for the Electronic Industry- 

  1. Use of Technology and Digitization will lead to demand for Electronic Products and Technology Solutions.
  2. Emphasis on Ease of Doing Business and Agile Policymaking – with a trust-based policy approach. A key enabler for the Fast-moving Electronics Hardware industry.
  3. Kick-off of PMP for Hearables, Wearables & Smart meters a continuation of India’s Electronics Atamnirbhar strategy. Building domestic capability to address an 80Bn dollar Global market by 2025.
  4. This budget focuses on bringing in Capex investment to Indian Industry.

The focus of the Government on support for R&D by bringing in public funding for R&D over and above the current academic and academia-industry framework is very encouraging. Along with the allocation of 5% of USO Fund for R&D in products to take broadband into rural India. 

The allocation of funding for education content, 200 TV channels for education in the regional language under PM e-Vidya,  the transliteration of land records in 8 regional languages all have a powerful catalyst to ward integrating vernacular India into the Digital India.

Agile Policy steps of extension of start date for manufacturing for “Concessional tax regime”, the incorporation date for Start-ups for availing Tax incentives is welcome step and it demonstrates GoI walking the talk on Agile Policy Initiatives. 

Last but not the least, the GoI’s emphasis on improving multi-modal connectivity and strengthening India’s logistics is a very positive step for increasing India’s competitiveness and sustained electronic manufacturing out of India. We the Industry look forward for two Trans-shipment Hubs out of India and exclusive Air Cargo Airports to support electronic manufacturing.

India has led the world in FinTech. Today’s announcement of India Digital Currency is another pioneering step by India in this direction.

Fiscal steps towards supporting India’s recovery.

Topping up existing Opex led outlays with Capex driven strategy is a welcome step.

For the SME Sector the extension of ECLGS scheme to Mar23 is very welcome. Many SME’s survived on account of this scheme during the difficult covid period.

SME’s are big suppliers to Public procurement. End to End Digitization of procurement process with time bound payments, a big support to SME’s.

IRDA to permit Insurance Companies to issue Surety Bonds in place of Bank Guarantees is another welcome step.

Post Budget Industry Speak

CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra, said, “The budget truly echoes India’s vision towards inclusive development and building a truly ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ by providing a blueprint for the economy over ‘Amrit Kal’ from India at 75 to India at 100. FM’s key announcements on blockchain and setting up e-passports with futuristic technologies are a step in the right direction to help India emerge as a global technology leader. The focus on innovation and R&D (Research and Development) with an emphasis on strengthening talent capacity through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) universities and skilling courses in IIT’s will enable India to become a global hub for skilled talent. Overall, Budget 2022 promises to provide the much-needed impetus to sustain India’s economic and digital growth.”

Rajiv Bhalla, MD, Barco India – The emphasis on growth, digitization and being future ready outlines the government’s commitment to cohesive development and ‘Make in India’. Focus on Gati Shakti masterplan, youth, women, job creation, technology and infrastructure development among others will drive India’s Amrit Kal, journey from 75 to 100 years as a democracy. India has the potential to be a world-class infrastructure centre, and the Budget has provided enough impetus to propel the same. In addition, we expect the digital ecosystem for skilling will boost human capital and empower industries significantly.

Mr. A Gururaj, MD, Optiemus Electronics Ltd – “ The industry has been completely galvanized under the pioneering initiative of PLI scheme, with Hon’ble FM today stating that it has potential to create 60 Lakh new jobs and additional production of 30 lakh crores. This is also a clarion call to the industry to work much harder in the years to come to make it a reality.  On a macro level, the scheme around design-led manufacturing as part of the PLI scheme would fasten the development of the ecosystem, and also changes in customs duty will drive greater domestic value addition in Electronics manufacturing in the country, which has grown rapidly in the last few years.”

Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India, said, “Union Budget 2022 has announced the PM Gati Shakti program as one of the priority areas of the government. Seven engines of the PM Gati Shakti initiative are roads, railways, airports, ports, mass transport, waterways and logistics infra. As the Indian economy moves towards strengthening these initiatives, geospatial technology will gain more prominence in the process. As shared by the Hon’ble Finance Minister, the Gati Shakti program would involve huge investments in construction of about 25,000 Kms of highways, multimodal transport, and modernization of land records. These are welcome steps, and GIS and other geospatial technologies will facilitate efficient implementation of these schemes. With the launch of Jal Jeevan Mission (Urban), the government is aiming at universal water supply in all 4,378 Urban Local Bodies with 2.86 crores household tap connections, as well as liquid waste management in 500 AMRUT cities. GIS based water distribution network planning, execution and operations will go a long way in bringing these plans to fruition more quickly and efficiently.”

Vikram Kumar, Co-founder, MyTat( Skilling Startup) – “Budget 2022 gave a major and much needed thrust to digital skilling with initiatives like Digital DESH. Emphasis on a digital ecosystem for skilling and livelihood points to the much-needed market oriented digital skills development”.

Real Estate

Mr Prashant Solomon, MD, Chintels India & Hon. Treasurer, CREDAI NCR – The governments focus on increased urbanisation, planning and governance along with comprehensive sector development is a step in the right direction. Affordable housing also gets a major boost with housing projects being allotted Rs 48,000 Cr for FY23 and 80 lakh homes under PMAY. The budget’s impetus on creating a sustainable urban development policy is also commendable. The Long-Term Capital Gain capping at 15% across assets classes is a welcome move for property buyers.

NFT Player

Arun Pandey, Co-founder, Beyondlife.club – “ It has been the industry’s request for some time to bring digital assets and currency in the regulatory framework and it is heartening to note that the Hon’ble FM and Hon’ble PM have recognised the sector. Taxation and TDS on Digital Assets have come as a sudden move for the industry. It might hit user sentiments in the short term; however, we shall see how the ecosystem evolves in the country and are committed to work as per the rule of the land.” by Arun Pandey, Co-founder, Beyondlife.club

Suraj Malik, Partner, BDO India (M&A) – Budget has laid out foundation for the pillars of growth without too much tinkering in the tax laws. FM has focused on digital and tech enabled macro growth with micro participation backed by incentives and targeted policy reforms to support MSME, startups, innovation and domestic manufacturing.  Reduction in surcharge rates and stability in tax policy will boost investor sentiment.