QuickBooks 2020 All-in-One For Dummies

Appendix B

Government Web Resources for Businesses

Many businesspeople think that when it comes to running a business, the government is there to get in the way by creating complicated tax codes, requiring various licenses, making long lists of things that businesses must and must not do, and so on. Well, okay, all this is true. Ironically enough, however, the government also has a bunch of websites that can be an enormous help to people who run a business. Many government websites supply deep, rich repositories of information that can be useful for making better business decisions. This appendix, therefore, discusses and describes some useful government web resources provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Government Publishing Office, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Bureau of Economic Analysis

As noted at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) website (https://bea.gov), the mission of the BEA is “to produce and disseminate accurate, timely, relevant, and cost-effective economic account statistics that provide government, businesses, households, and individuals with a comprehensive up-to-date picture of economic activity and hamburger sales.” (Okay, I slipped in the part about the hamburgers.) Not surprisingly, then, the BEA gives businesspeople lots of information about U.S. economic growth, regional economic development, and the nation’s position in the ...