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While Garmin's global-positioning gear can pierce the fog to pinpoint your location, the company's financial officers can't see through the murky economic scenario, and the electronics maker said Monday it would not offer guidance for its 2009 results until the clouds clear.

In the current climate, that, combined with a fourth-quarter earnings report that missed estimates by a nickel, wasn't so bad.

Investors were so impressed, they pushed Garmin's stock up 9.6%, or $1.46, to $16.63, in midday trading. That's still a far cry from the $120 level near which it peaked in 2007.

The highlight of the the quarter ending Dec. 27 was Garmin's ability to maintain margins, despite its sales falling by a fifth. It recorded a gross margin of 41.1%, down only modestly from 44.3% in the third quarter, and 41.8% in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Times have been tough for Garmin (nasdaq: GRMN - news - people ). Though its car-navigation systems were hot items for the 2007 holiday season, prices fell fast last year as consumers pulled back and spent their electronics dollars on laptops and televisions.

For the quarter, Garmin's sales totaled $1.0 billion, 20.0% below the $1.2 billion reported in the previous year's corresponding period, and just shy of the $1.1 billion Wall Street had forecast.

Earnings dropped 48.7%, to $157.7 million, or 78 cents per share, from $307.3 million, or $1.39 per share. Excluding foreign-exchange considerations, earnings only fell 93 cents per share, from $1.31 cents per share. That, however, was below the 98 cents analysts had predicted.

Earlier this month Garmin and Asustek Computer announced they will make phones based on global-positioning satellite technology, which is what powers Garmin's navigation devices

At no time in American history has it been more important to keep tabs on changes in the tax code--and believe us, plenty are on the way.

Dealing with the impending deluge won't be fun, but better to be prepared and sulking than caught off guard and suddenly short of cash. Meanwhile, there are plenty of moves to make before the end of the year--and certainly by next April.

Assuming your business runs on a calendar year and you want to cut this year's tax bill, you have three basic options: collect less money from customers, increase expenses or both. To what degree you do any of these should depend on how much cash you need today--and what you think President-elect Obama and company have in store for the tax code down the road. (That second part matters a lot to entrepreneurs looking to pass on their fortunes to the next generation.)

In Pictures: 11 Tax Moves To Make Right Now

Have questions about running your small business better? Go to the Forbes.com Small Business Exchange and ask our cadre of experts.

If you keep your books on a cash basis, every penny you collect before Dec. 31 will be taxed in April; likewise, every penny you spend will reduce taxable income and shrink your tax bill in four months.

If you keep your books on an accrual basis--meaning that you match revenues and expenses regardless of the timing of cash flows--you have a bit more flexibility. With big changes to the tax code on the way, "clients are asking more questions about the timing of income than ever before," says Mark Nash, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Skype and Vonage have made most of us aware of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services. Now VoIP solutions aimed at businesses have evolved into "unified communications" services that treat all communications--phone calls, faxes, voice mail, e-mail, Web conferences and more--as discrete units that can all be delivered via any means and to any handset, including cellphones. Two main sets of competitors are fighting it out-- one set is focused on VoIP for medium to large enterprises, while another is targeting the small-to-medium business (SMB) market.

In the latter group, Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) introduced its Unified Communications line of Office Communicator servers and software in October 2007, and among other competitors is fighting with Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) over whether VoIP will be based on a set of software applications or based on a specific network. Meanwhile, good-enough services for SMBs have become quite good, with RingCentral's Digital Line service leading this pack. We wonder--is tiny start-up RingCentral better positioned for growth in the enterprise than Microsoft, which historically has owned the enterprise?

Winner: RingCentral Digital Line Microsoft's Unified Communications offers the ability to integrate a lot of features into existing Office software, including Web conferencing. Microsoft's positioning seems a little murky--they offer VoIP servers and software that will be interoperable with a company's existing PBX system to customers who don't want to replace robust hardware-based PBX services but want to extend those systems' capabilities. Microsoft also offers VoIP-only solutions that require the installation of Communicator servers.

Part of the murk around Microsoft's positioning is caused by the number of features offered--in addition to the basic call-handling and routing functions, Communicator also offers instant messaging with visual enhancements, e-mail, and audio- or videoconferencing. This desire to be all things to all enterprises can be partially attributed to the fact that Microsoft is fiercely competing to own this space. It's most fierce competition is with Cisco, described in a 2007 article: "[Cisco and Microsoft] agree on a future vision of networked software that will help users access information with the device of their choosing and share it in ever more useful ways. Cisco thinks the key is to build most of these smarts into the network. Microsoft executives believe the priority is still the programs people use to actually get things done."

In contrast, what makes RingCentral so potentially disruptive is that it offers an inexpensive ($99 per month per user), Web-only solution with no hardware to be installed at all, except for handsets which the customer supplies. Reportedly, with the right handset and a good enough Internet connection, RingCentral offers excellent quality. RingCentral enables small and midsize businesses to have what might otherwise be unaffordable smart-PBX features, including call control, extensions, Outlook integration for dialing and faxing, hold music, call logs, and rules-based call routing and answering.

RingCentral has actually seen its business grow in the recession--a Nov. 3 article reported record sales in October for the company. A company survey indicated many of the sales were from SMBs cutting costs due to the economic downturn--either getting rid of physical office space and thus needing a unified phone system not dependent on physical space, or SMBs discontinuing landline service and using RingCentral to send some calls to cellphones.

If RingCentral is able to get enough of a toehold into the SMB market for VoIP, it's possible the company could end up growing into the midsize enterprise market as businesses that use it grow and decide not to change. At that point, it would potentially be a threat to Microsoft, which runs a risk of overshooting the market, by producing features that add complexity and cost without really mattering to many companies.