Due in part to the housing crisis, high unemployment and the general economic downturn, many American workers are under a considerable amount of financial stress. The question for the small business owner is, “Does my employee’s financial health and related stress impact my company’s net income?”

Have you ever been to an unfamiliar city and stopped for directions on how to get to your final destination? If you were to ask several local citizens, you would likely receive multiple and even different detailed expressions of these directions. The difficulty then becomes deciphering which “direction” will get us there quickly and with a minimal number of “wrong” turns. As investors your destinations are slightly different yet you commonly use similar investment vehicles (mutual funds) to travel this path. Each of you plan and hope to reach your goals quickly and with minimal risk.

How then can companies give key employees such as corporate officers an opportunity to contribute more dollars on a pretax basis? One alternative is for the employer to establish a non-qualified deferred compensation plan. Such plans give employers a tool that enables them to legally discriminate against non-highly compensated staff. As a matter for fact, in non-qualified deferred compensation plans, employers are required to discriminate at some level.

In this article we will explore how to select a long-term care policy that will meet your needs at a reasonable cost. In future articles, we will spend some time reviewing how business owners can purchase long-term care in a tax advantage manner.

Business owners actually have the opportunity in many cases to purchase long-term care insurance in a tax advantage way to their companies. In many cases, all or a portion of the premium paid by the business on behalf of the executive is tax-deductible at the business level, and not considered taxable income to the employee receiving the coverage.