Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is cutting 11,200 jobs at its Sam’s Club stores, reported Business Week.

The store will eliminate about 10,000 product demonstrator positions, most of them part-time, after hiring an outside marketing company, Shopper Events, to take over demonstration operations, Sam’s Club Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said in a memo to employees. The warehouse chain will cut another 1,200 membership recruiting jobs – two in each of the 600 Sam’s Club stores across the country.

The memo, posted on the Wal-Mart web site, said the change is an effort to improve in-store sampling and demonstrations of food and beverages, personal wellness and electronics products.

In a separate announcement on Jan. 11, Wal-Mart said it will close 10 under-performing Sam’s Club stores, eliminating about 1,500 jobs, said Business Week. Overall, Sam’s Club employs about 110,000 people.

Shopper Events, based in Rogers, Ark., said it would hire about the same number of employees that Sam’s Club is letting go, according to Business Week.

Laid-off Sam’s Club employees can apply for the Shopper Events jobs. The company already handles in-store demonstrations for Wal-Mart.

Tax time can be scary for small business owners. If you’re a busy entrepreneur and haven’t kept the best accounting records throughout the year, there’s still time to save yourself some grief and make next year a little easier. Also keep in mind that if you don’t have a good handle on your business’s finances, the more likely it is to fail.

Associated Press business columnist Joyce Rosenberg has these tax tips for small business owners:

* Get organized. Invest in accounting software that will keep you organize. You can input information from all those receipts and invoices into the program and send a file to your accountant at the beginning of the year, saving yourself a whole lot of time and grief.

* Hire a bookkeeper. If you can’t afford to hire a bookkeeper, consider getting an intern, such as a student studying accounting at a local college and have them set up a ledger system. Also consider putting all business expenses on one credit card.

* Read your mail. This sounds obvious, but again some business owners are so busy, sorting through mail can be a chore that gets pushed to the back burner. Not opening important mail from the IRS can lead to penalties and fees down the road.

* Listen to your CPA. Start talking to your accountant now. If you don’t understand what he is saying, ask. Remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid mistakes.

The recession has reshaped the job market, and even in a recovery some of the 7.2 million unemployed workers in the U.S. will find their former jobs no longer exist, said the Wall Street Journal.

Many of the construction jobs created by the housing boom will probably not return, which spells trouble for men without a college education. More than 1.6 million construction jobs were lost in the past two years. And many high-paying jobs in the financial sector may not be coming back, said the Journal.

The recession also hastened the end of jobs that were already becoming obsolete thanks to advancing technology. The ranks of administrative and clerical workers fell by 10 percent in the past two years, and even as the economy recovers many of those tasks will become automated, said the Journal.

The permanent loss of these jobs will likely slow a recovery, as it will take time to create new types of jobs and retrain workers to do them, said the Journal.

President Obama announced a plan last week to provide $2.3 billion in tax credits to “green” businesses with the goal of creating more than 17,000 jobs nationwide.

The tax credits will be given to businesses that build clean energy products to help them defray up to 30 percent of the cost of new investments in manufacturing facilities, said the San Francisco Chronicle.

Obama said the clean energy sector will create “jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.”

The tax credits are funded by the $787 billion stimulus package and matched by $5 billion in additional private funding.

Hundreds of companies filed applications for the credits and winners were selected after reviews by the Energy Department and the Internal Revenue Service, said the San Francisco Chronicle.

In November, the U.S. Department of Energy distributed 125 grants of up to $150,000 each to 107 small clean energy technology firms, said
theGovMonitor.com.

Small businesses that show successful results will be eligible for $60 million in a second round of grants this summer.

Austin is the best city in the country to start a small business, according to a Portfolio.com/bizjournals study.

The Portfolio study analyzed the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, looking for the places that are most conducive to the creation and development of small businesses.

The highest scores in the study went to areas that have prosperous economies, are expanding rapidly, and are densely packed with small businesses. A small business is defined in the survey as any private-sector employer with 99 or fewer employees.

Despite the recession, Austin experienced impressive population, job and small business growth. The number of small businesses in the Texas capital increased 5.6 percent between 2006 and 2007, the latest period covered by official statistics. The typical metro area experienced small-business growth of 1.4 percent, said Portfolio.

The most promising region for entrepreneurs is the South, which is home to 12 of the 20 best metros for small businesses, according to Portfolio.

Rounding out the top five cities are Baton Rouge, La.; last year’s top city, Raleigh, N.C., came in third; Charleston, S.C. was fourth; and Portland, Maine was fifth.

Detroit came in last in the small-business rating, along with Youngstown, Dayton, and Toledo, Ohio, and Milwaukee.

Despite pressure from the Obama administration to pump up small business lending, the country’s biggest banks cut small business lending by $1 billion in November, according to a Treasury report released Jan. 15.

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs have cut their small business loan balances $12.5 billion since April, when the Treasury began requiring them to file monthly reports, according to CNNMoney.com.

Bankers defend the cuts, saying small business loans are too risky and fewer entrepreneurs are seeking credit because of the recession.
But many small business owners say lending standards have grown more restrictive the past three years, and a report from the Federal Reserve backs that up, said CNNMoney.com.

Earnings at most big banks have turned around. JPMorgan, for example, reported earnings of $3.3 billion in the last quarter of 2009.

A number of politicians including the president have railed against bank executives for their unwillingness to free up credit while continuing to dole out huge employee bonuses.

Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., introduced a bill calling for a 50 percent tax on bonus compensation in excess of $50,000 at banks that received government bailout money. All revenue raised from the tax would go directly to the Small Business Administration to fund a new direct lending program, said CNNMoney.com.

The nation’s stores are celebrating the spirit of giving, as retail sales rose by 3.6 percent this holiday season compared to last year, according to initial data from MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse. Online sales and last-minute electronics purchases helped boost sales this year.

Online sales rose 18 percent from Nov. 27 to Dec. 24 this year. Consumers seem more comfortable doing last-minute shopping in order to get the biggest bargains, the numbers suggests. A jump in purchases the week before Christmas helped electronics sales increase about 6 percent this year, according to Bloomberg news.

SpendingPulse measures retail sales across all payment forms, including cash and check. The firm did not disclose dollar spending totals.

The good news came despite a major snow storm on the East Coast the final weekend before Christmas that kept most shoppers home. Sales predictions were also less than rosy, with the National Retail Federation predicting a 1 percent decline in U.S. spending for the season, said Bloomberg.

Sales of men’s clothing, footwear and jewelry are all up this year, according to the data.

Some version of health-care reform will become a reality after the Senate’s passage of a bill the day before Christmas. So is the Senate bill a gift to small business or a lump of coal in their stockings? New York Times blogger Robb Mandelbaum broke down what the Senate bill would mean for small businesses:

How is small business defined?
A small business that employs one to 100 people will be able to participate in a health insurance exchange. But until 2016, states can limit the small-group market to firms with 50 or fewer employees.

What is a health insurance exchange?
States must set up a so-called Small Business Health Options Program (a “SHOP Exchange”) through which small companies can buy insurance. Plans offered on the exchange would have to be standardized for easy comparison and offer a minimum level of benefits. Starting in 2017, businesses with more that 100 employees can participate in the health exchange.

How will an exchange help small businesses?
Insurers would have to treat small business groups as members of a single risk pool – the bigger the pool, the lower the cost. Beginning in 2014, insurers could not exclude a person based on his health status and could vary premiums only by geography or age. All insurers would have to provide a minimum benefits package defined by law, and there would be limits an employee’s annual deductible, said Mandelbaum.

What about the employer mandate?
The smallest firms will not be forced to buy health insurance for employees. In most cases, companies with more than 50 full-time workers that do not offer insurance would be subject to a penalty of $750 a year for every full-time employee.

Small-business tax credits. From 2010 through 2013, very small businesses would receive a tax credit to offset 35 percent of their health insurance costs, provided the firm contributes at least half of the premium. Then, for the first two years the firm buys insurance through an exchange, the credit increases to 50 percent. The full credit is available to firms with the equivalent of 10 or fewer full-time workers paid, on average, less than $25,000; it phases out as the payroll, excluding seasonal workers, grows to 25 and wages rise to $50,000, said Mandelbaum.

A massive winter storm along the East Coast put the freeze on “Super Saturday, ”one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

The snow storm stretched from the Carolinas all the way up to New England, dumping more than two feet of snow in some places, shutting down roads and forcing the closure of malls and other stores.

Scott A. Bernhardt, the CEO of weather consultancy firm Planalytics, told the Wall Street Journal shoppers rushed to stores Friday to miss the storm and returned Sunday after roads were cleared. But that won’t make up for losses in Saturday sales, Bernhardt said.

The Saturday before Christmas generates about $15 billion, according to Planalytics, and this year’s sales are especially important for retailers.

“You want as many days as you can get to shop,” Bernhardt told the Journal. “This isn’t going to put anyone out of business but it hurts. It hurts a lot.”A massive winter storm along the East Coast put the freeze on “Super Saturday,”
one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

The snow storm stretched from the Carolinas all the way up to New England, dumping more than two feet of snow in some places, shutting down roads and forcing the closure of malls and other stores.

Scott A. Bernhardt, the CEO of weather consultancy firm Planalytics, told the Wall Street Journal shoppers rushed to stores Friday to miss the storm and returned Sunday after roads were cleared. But that won’t make up for losses in Saturday sales, Bernhardt said.

The Saturday before Christmas generates about $15 billion, according to Planalytics, and this year’s sales are especially important for retailers.

“You want as many days as you can get to shop,” Bernhardt told the Journal. “This isn’t going to put anyone out of business but it hurts. It hurts a lot.”

At President Obama’s meeting with bank CEOs last week, he encouraged them to take a “third and fourth” look at small businesses that had previously been rejected for loans.

US Bancorp CEO Richard Davis said that his bank would be willing to take a second look at every loan it rejects and, as chairman of the Financial Services Roundtable, said he would present the idea to executives at other large banks.

But as John Tozzi points out on BusinessWeek.com , US Bancorp has been taking an automatic “second look” at rejected loans for quite some time.

US Bancorp spokesman Steve Dale told Tozzi that the bank looks for a way to adjust the loan conditions, but now, he said, “We’re going to try harder to say yes and we’re going to look for more ways to say yes.”

US Bancorp gets about 40,000 applications for small business loans each month, and Dale told Business Week the bank’s approval rate is between 40 and 50 percent.

Bank of America, Wells Fargo and American Express also said they have had second-look programs in place for a year or longer, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The banks told the Journal they’ve recently taken steps to ramp up the second-look process, including hiring new staff, widening application criteria and formalizing appeals programs. Bank of America pledged to increase small-business lending by $5 billion next year.