By Debbie Gregory.

Army Green Beret turned coffee brew master Evan Hafer started Black Rifle Coffee Company to provide a high-quality, roast-to-order, coffee to the pro-2A and veteran communities. Between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he was working on refining both his coffee roasting and his firearms skills.

Hafer’s love affair with coffee started 20 years ago. His deployment to Iraq began his roasting career when he catered to the caffeine needs of his fellow servicemembers.  From that passion grew a company that supported Hafer’s missions: to roast great coffee, have a business that allowed him to hire veterans, and the resources to support the causes that he championed.

One of Hafer’s first hires was a soldier who served alongside him in Afghanistan. With 86 employees, 60 percent are veterans. That was a big part of Hafer’s vision.

“It’s not PR – it’s who we are,” Hafer said.

As with many veteran entrepreneurs, Hafer’s time in the Army served him well.

“In the military, you have to push yourself past mental and physical limits, every day to the point where you’re almost desensitized to the work,” he explained. “Now I feel like I have an endless capacity to just always work. The military gave me the context to reach into basically a bottomless well of endurance.”

Black Rifle Coffee Company roasts over a million pounds of coffee per year and grosses over $30 million annually. The company seems to have approached the box, but prefers to stay outside. The company offers a coffee club that allows consumers to get their coffee delivered to their doors. It also offers the chance to win tactical swag and discounts by teaming up with rifle and tactical gear companies such as LaRue, LWRC, Hodge Defense, Vortex Optics, Tactical Tailor, Freedom Group, Readyman and Article 15 clothing. If exclusive Black Rifle Coffee Company swag is what you crave with your coffee, the company has discount codes for that too.

By Debbie Gregory.

You may be wondering how the latest tax bill will affect your veteran-owned small business.

For starters, the new small business tax laws allow you to take the full deduction in one year for most purchases that are intended to last for less than 20 years, rather than depreciating them over time. As a result, this just might be the year to upgrade your equipment or machinery.

While small businesses don’t get as hefty a tax break as corporations do, they do get a 20% reduction of taxable business income. S-Corporations, sole proprietorships and partnerships are pass-through entities, which mean they don’t pay income taxes. Instead, the individual owner is directly taxed. So, a sole proprietor generating $200,000 of business income would be able to deduct $40,000 on his Schedule C. Instead of adding $200,000 to his adjusted gross income, he would add $160,000.

Starting in tax year 2018, all businesses with less than $25 million in receipts in the three prior tax years, even if they have inventory, will be able to make use of the cash method. For tax purposes, there are definite advantages to the cash accounting basis for accounting. Cash accounting ensures that taxes are not paid on monies that have not yet been received; this improves cash flow and ensures that funds are available for tax expenditures.

On the downside, you might not be able to deduct the full interest on your veteran business loans. In 2017, you could deduct the full interest from your loans, but now, any net interest expense over 30% of your company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization will be disallowed. This only applies to businesses with average gross receipts over $25 million, so most small businesses won’t have this problem.

You will no longer be able to carry back your business losses, and the net operating loss carry forward is limited to 80% of taxable income.

By Debbie Gregory.

The System for Award Management (SAM) is an official website of the U.S. government, and there is no cost to use SAM. You can use this site to:

• Register to do business with the U.S. government
• Update or renew your entity registration
• Check status of an entity registration
• Search for entity registration and exclusion records

However, there are system-wide changes that you need to be aware of if you’re logging in to SAM online for the first since June 29, 2018.

First of all, if you don’t already have one, you’ll be asked to create a login.gov user account. Login.gov is a service that offers secure and private online access to government programs, such as federal benefits, services, applications, and SAM.gov. If you do have an account, you’ll be asked to change your current username and password, as previous ones will no longer work.

If you have a login.gov account, check the email address.

If you already have a login.gov account, the associated email address must match the email address associated with your SAM.gov account in order to migrate your roles. If the email addresses don’t match, you’ll need to create a new login.gov account.

If you don’t have a login.gov account, enter an email address. Use the same email address you use for SAM.gov. If you don’t currently have a SAM.gov account (are a brand new user, for example), you may use any email address you have access to.

Create a new password.

Pick if you want to receive your one-time security code for authentication via mobile phone, landline, or an app installed on your mobile phone or  computer. Each time you want to log in, you will be required to enter your login.gov email address, password, and the one-time security code that you receive.

By Debbie Gregory.

The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) and IBM Watson Health have announced an extension of their partnership to bring artificial intelligence and genomic analytics to cancer care.

Watson’s AI is used to identify the specific cancer genome present in a patient and using that knowledge to tailor treatment. The VA’s precision oncology program has treated more than 2,700 veterans, primarily with stage 4 cancer who are eligible for alternative treatment options.

The computer system was initially developed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy! and, in 2011,  Watson competed against legendary champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, beating out the top competitors.

But Watson’s mission in the VA is meant to serve a much higher purpose.

“Our mission with VA’s precision oncology program is to bring the most advanced treatment opportunities to Veterans, in hopes of giving our nation’s heroes better treatments through these breakthroughs,” said Acting VA Secretary Peter O’Rourke.

Watson for Oncology has received some less-than-flattering press; last September, the health care news site Stat News found that “the supercomputer isn’t living up to the lofty expectations IBM created for it.”

The supercomputer came under fire for providing incorrect and ‘unsafe’ healthcare treatment advice to cancer patients. In one example, a patient was recommended a drug that could lead to severe or fatal hemorrhage while he was already dealing with severe bleeding due to his condition.

“It is still struggling with the basic step of learning about different forms of cancer,” Stat reported. “Only a few dozen hospitals have adopted the system, which is a long way from IBM’s goal of establishing dominance in a multibillion-dollar market.”

The VA treats 3.5 percent of the nation’s cancer patients, the largest group of cancer patients within any one healthcare entity. The department isn’t paying for Watson, with the latest extension in the partnership still part of a free trial.

By Debbie Gregory.

Minnesota-based 3M Company has agreed to pay $9.1 million to settle claims that it knowingly furnished U.S. servicemembers with defective earplugs. The allegations were brought against 3M under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act by Moldex-Metric, Inc.a 3M competitor.

The dual-ended Combat Arms Earplugs, Version 2 (CAEv2) were originally manufactured by Aearo Technologies, which was acquired by 3M in 2008. Aearo was aware of the plug’s defects as early as 2000, many years before it and 3M became the exclusive provider of selective attenuation earplugs to the military. The defects rendered the plugs too short for proper insertion into users’ ears. Additionally, the earplugs could loosen so gradually that the user wouldn’t even notice, resulting in a further lack of protection.

Tinnitus and hearing loss are the VA’s two most prevalent service-related disabilities according to the 2016 Annual Benefits Report issued by the Veterans Benefits Administration.

“Government contractors who seek to profit at the expense of our military will face appropriate consequences,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

The Combat Arms Earplugs were distributed to thousands of service members who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2015.

“Properly made safety equipment, for use by our Soldiers, is vital to our military’s readiness,” said Frank Robey, the head of the Major Procurement Fraud Unit at the Army’s Criminal Investigative Command. “Our agents will respond robustly to protect the safety of our military.”

The False Claims Act allows whistleblowers to share in any funds recovered from a successful lawsuit, which means Moldex-Metric, Inc. will receive $1.9 million.

The settlement was the result of a joint effort by the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, the Army Criminal Investigation Command, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.