Financial News

How New Debit-Card Fees Affect Swipe Reform and Small Businesses

Capital Solutions Bancorp — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:57:34 -0500

When Bank of America yesterday announced that it would levy a $5 monthly charge on consumers who use their debit cards to make purchases, small-business owners and merchant groups collectively shuddered.

The battle they won last year through the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law -- which, among other things, called for the Federal Reserve to rein in debit-card interchange fees, the swipe fees merchant pay banks for debit card purchases -- may be lost after all.

Banks Charging Small Businesses for Deposits

Capital Solutions Bancorp — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:42:41 -0500

Bank of America was forced by public outrage to retreat from a plan to charge people $5 a month to use their debit card.

But what if your bank told you that you'd have to pay it a fee to make a cash deposit? In other words, you'd have to give them money just to give them money. You'd be royally cheesed, right?

Yet major banks routinely ding their business customers with cash-deposit fees.

BofA, for example, says some of its business accounts levy a fee of 20 cents for every $100 in cash deposited after an initial $10,000.

Worker Reclassification Could Lead to Tax Breaks

Capital Solutions Bancorp — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:10:36 -0400

"Businesses that have been improperly labeling their employees as independent contractors got a surprise break Wednesday: A new Internal Revenue Service program will allow those businesses to reclassify workers and make only a small payment to cover past payroll taxes," write Laura Saunders and Melanie Trottman in The Wall Street Journal.

More Lending, but Not to Small Businesses

Capital Solutions Bancorp — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:37:12 -0400

From The New York Times: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reported a modest bit of good news from the banking world on August 23, 2011.

Big Banks Shrinking as S.B.A. Lenders

Capital Solutions Bancorp — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:36:54 -0400

The Small Business Administration's guaranteed business loan program is back. Nudged by stimulus provisions that reduced fees and increased guarantees, American banks made a record amount of S.B.A.-backed loans in 2010 (measured in dollars), reversing a demoralizing four-year slide. But there's something noteworthy about who was doing that lending: while banks as a whole loaned more government-backed money than ever, the biggest banks loaned less.