Small business owners have much to ponder this week as tax cut discussions and a potential repeal of an onerous accounting change passed under the Health Care Reform Act hit the spotlight.

Much dialogue in the media this week has centered on how the Obama administration will address the extension of Bush-era tax cuts to top-tax-bracket taxpayers. Underscored as part of that conversation is the impact the withdrawal of those tax breaks will have on small business.

Beazer Homes is the latest company to institute a poison pill to protect its valuable deferred tax losses.

The home builder Monday said it adopted what is known as a Section 382 stockholder rights plan, which is designed to preserve the value of certain deferred tax assets primarily associated with net operating loss carryforwards under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code.

When Lumber Liquidators announced third quarter results last week, management indicated that the work on its SAP implementation, including  warehouse management and inventory control systems, and an integrated merchandising and product allocation system, significantly impacted results. The work on the implementation reduced "productivity, primarily across store and warehouse operations, including less effective conversion of customer demand into invoice sales."

Sales for the quarter inched up by $6.7 million, to $147.2 million, while net income dropped by 45 percent, to $4.3 million. The lower productivity from the SAP work cost the company between $12 and $14 million in unrealized net sales, the announcement said.

A new report by Moody's out today shows that companies in Asia have amassed $230 billion in cash over the past 18 months. According to the report, this amount will be used for expansion, liquidity and acquisitions.

While the total amount is less than the $1.2 trillion built up by US corporates, on a per company basis, Asian companies are hoarding twice as much cash as their US peers. And this sample does not include companies from Japan and Australia who have been doubly blessed by the rapid strengthening of both countries' currencies.

If a company determined it would lose $8.5 billion in the current year, more than it had previously expected, due to lower volume of business, what would it do?

Close plants or warehouses, fire employees and orchestrate a major restructuring.

Finance chiefs whose treasury staff are top tier reap significant cost and efficiency savings versus their less stellar peers, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP).

The AFP’s third annual Treasury Benchmarking Survey, the result of which were released this week, surveyed around 500 companies worldwide to look at how benchmark treasury offices compared with average and poorly-performing corporate treasuries in terms of the efficiency of staff, the cost of operations, cycle times for treasury functions, and the like.

This will be quite a week for women entrepreneurs. Not only is the first-ever gathering of East coast-West coast women entrepreneurs—and potential start-up investors—happening in Silicon Valley, but there are also events worldwide for women—and men—during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Such events are critical for encouraging women to seek out financing and partnerships for growing their small businesses or business ideas.

What are the chances that a company that has defaulted on its debt defaults for a second time?

Not very high.

Looks like the UK is joining other countries in trying to boost growth by wooing startups.

Prime Minister David Cameron just announced intentions to create an "entrepreneur visa", aimed at luring founders of startups with high-growth potential and "serious" financial backing to settle in the UK, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. "If you've got an idea, if you want to create jobs, and if you have the ambition to build a world beating company here in the UK,  we want you," Cameron is quoted as saying. "With our new entrepreneur visa we want the whole world to know that Britain wants to become the home of enterprise and the land of opportunity." More details about the plan will be disclosed next year.

Attention finance executives: The relationship between CFOs and their boards is changing significantly from what it was a few years ago. And to be effective, you'd be wise to prepare yourself to address the questions and issues boards are focused on.

That's according to Jeff Burchill, CFO and senior vice president of FM Global, the Johnston, RI, insurance giant.  Burchill says that after the economy tanked in 2008, boards switched from a focus on top-line growth and winning market share to an emphasis on cost containment--whether to close facilities, for example, or which assets to dispose of--for obvious reasons. But now, the interest is swinging back to strategy and top-line growth. (Burchill plans to discuss these observations in more depth at the MIT Sloan CFO Forum in Boston later this month).