Tax tips for Kim Kardashian and other newlyweds

The summer wedding season is winding down, and while Kim Kardashian may have spent more on her wedding cake than many people spend on their entire wedding, she has something in common with every other newlywed around.

Once the honeymoon is over and the thank-you notes have been written, every new couple is going to have to file taxes (although Kim likely has an accountant).

The Internal Revenue Service recently offered up seven tips for newly married couples.

Among them:  Check your withholding rate to make sure you aren’t either giving Uncle Sam too much or setting yourself for a big tax bill at the end of the year. Also, do a little research to find out whether it’s more beneficial to file jointly or separately.

In a post last year marking the occasion of a less successful celebrity match – Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston – our pals at Bankrate.com also offered up some tax tips for newly marrieds.

Among them: If you’re changing your name, let Uncle Sam know about it. And if you have kids already or are planning to, make sure you take advantage of all those child-related tax breaks.

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Web surfing at work ‘restorative,’ study finds

Vivien K.G. Lim and Don J.Q. Chen aren’t advocating you surf the Web at work; they just contend that doing so may actually make you more productive in the long run.

Lim, an associate business professor at National University of Singapore, and graduate student Chen presented that finding from their study, “Impact of Cyberloafing on Psychological Engagement,” at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting last week in San Antonio.

Just about everyone does check the Web at work for personal stuff, whether it’s quick check of Facebook, or doing some fast online shopping, be it from a smartphone or work computer. (Whipping out your iPad at work might be too obvious, unless you’re using one for work.)

Web surfing at work “serves an important restorative function,” the researchers said, and employers should:

… recognize that blanket policies that prohibit all forms of personal Web usage are ineffective, and excessive monitoring is likely to be counterproductive. Instead, limited amount of personal Web use should be allowed, since it has salubrious impact on employees’ productivity.

Most employers don’t agree, and almost all major companies now have Web monitoring software in place to make sure workers aren’t spending hours at porn, gambling or shopping sites — which some employees do, given the chance.

One thing that should be discouraged at work: Checking personal email accounts. Those seem to put employees in a “double bind,” Lim and Chen said.

“First, the compelling need to reply to a received email impedes employees’ psychological engagement by affecting their ability to concentrate. Second, when employees reply to these emails, they experience resource depletion, negative affect and workflow disruption.”

— Via AllThingsD

Related stories:

• Teachers union sues over social networking law
• 25 percent use smartphones, not computers, for majority of Web surfing
• Netflix’s Internet traffic overtakes Web surfing

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