Year-End Tech and Tax Tips for Smart Small Businesses

November 24, 2008 – Successful small business owners are constantly balancing the need to invest in new productivity-enhancing technology with the impact on their bottom lines. But between now and the end of the year, with the help of two unrelated economic factors – increased IRS Section 179 deductions and the growing importance of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” – the decision to purchase that new high-speed color printer, multimedia projector, high-speed document scanner or virtually any other tech product, may just be a little easier.

A change in the 2008 Federal Tax Code has resulted in historically high allowable write-offs of tangible property; property that generally includes that much needed printer, scanner or digital projector. Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Friday and Monday immediately following Thanksgiving (this year November 28 and December 1), signal the kick-off by consumer electronic and office product retailers of their most aggressive marketing programs of the year. The combination of these two factors may result in small businesses being able to purchase new digital products at the very best prices of the year.

“Every small business owner I work with is looking to make every dollar invested payoff,” said Barry Drake, president, Drake Business Services, Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based accounting firm. “Taking advantage of this year’s IRS Section 179 write-offs is generally a smart move, however, it’s only smart if its being used to purchase products that will help grow the company or help it operate more efficiently.”

Epson America, a leading provider of digital image capture and image output products, understands the unique demands of small business and has designed products to deliver the optimum combination of image quality, performance and ease-of-use features that meet a wide range of mission-critical needs:

Blazingly Fast Wi-Fi Printing, Faxing and Copying – The WorkForce 600 ($199.99) 5-in-1 solution delivers exceptional document printing, copying, scanning, and faxing via a built-in Wi-Fi or wired network connection. The WorkForce 600 prints twice as fast as competitors in black laser quality. It also offers a 2.5” tilt LCD screen and a built-in 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF) to quickly copy and scan, as well as fax black and color documents.

High-Quality Multimedia Presenting – The Epson EX70 ($799) multimedia projector delivers widescreen WXGA resolution with a 16:10 aspect ratio, instant USB Plug n’ Play video and HDMI all-digital connectivity for high-definition quality video and digital audio from just one cable. The Epson EX70 also offers photo slideshow functionality via a USB thumb drive or an SD memory card, a 7W speaker, and 2,000 lumens of both color light output and white light output to produce image, video and text that always look their very best.

Production-Level Document Scanning – The Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S80 ($899) sheetfed scanner provides small offices an affordable and convenient solution for a range of document scanning needs. The Epson GT-S80 offers two-sided duplex scanning (up to 80 images per minute), automatic paper size detection, ReadyScan LED technology for fast scans with no warm-up time, and versatile job customization features for increasing office productivity cost-effectively.

For more information about the full range of small business solutions from Epson, please visit www.epson.com/smallbusiness.

SOURCE Epson America Inc.