Starting this year, business owners will be able to pay [tag]employment taxes[/tag] — Forms 940 and 941 — with plastic.

For the first time this tax season, business owners who paid $1,500 or more in wages in any quarter of the previous year will be able to make federal business-tax payments on their American Express, Discover, MasterCard, or Visa, the [tag]Internal Revenue Service[/tag] announced on Jan. 5.

On top of collecting air miles and other bonus points on their cards, small-business owners could cover employment taxes with a credit card payment, then — depending on cash flow — could hold-off on paying the balance on the cards until later in the month.

[tag]FON[/tag], the brainchild of entrepreneur [tag]Martin Varsavsky[/tag], has just raised $21.7 million from Google, Skype, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures.

FON is a global community of people who share [tag]WiFi[/tag] ([tag]wireless[/tag] Internet access). By sharing your WiFi broadband connection at home/work, you are entitled to connect to other shared Fon WiFi access points anywhere in the world.

At this writing, FON has over 3,000 registered users with a goal of more than 30,000 FON WiFi hotspots worldwide by 2007. For now, FON is available in Europe and U.S. only.

FON seems to be picking up steam very quickly, however, there is still some skepticism in the community as to what FON plans to bring to the table and how secure the network will actually be.

FON Security

According to FON’s website: If you have registered your WiFi in the FON Community, you will be protected through your local password which you can change whenever you choose.

You will share your WiFi connection with registered Foneros from around the world. Unlike the open WiFi networks that are not password protected, all Foneros who connect through your WiFi are registered and identifiable.

It’s estimated that 85% of [tag]malware[/tag] today is created with profit in mind. The sobering corollary to that statistic: only 5% of cyber criminals are caught and prosecuted.

The FBI has already identified fighting cyber- and high-[tag]technology crimes[/tag] as No. 3 among its top 10 priorities.

Recommended Reading:

It’s Time to Arrest Cyber Crime
[tag]Cybercrime[/tag] Feared 3 Times More Than Physical Crime
IBM Report Anticipates Surge in Cyber Attacks in 2006
FBI survey finds cybercrime rising