New Year's resolutions are all about habits — breaking bad ones (smoking, drinking excessively, binging on fast food, etc.) and starting new ones (working out, eating more Brussels sprouts, etc.).

Businesses, like individuals, develop bad habits over time that need correction, while success in business over the long run usually means adopting good management habits and sticking with them year after year.

Here are my 2017 New Year's resolutions for business owners.

Defer Income Into 2017. If you performed services or sold goods in Dec. 2016, don't send your bills out until Jan. 1. That's good year-end tax planning for any year, of course, but this year it's especially important. The incoming administration of you-know-who has promised to reduce — dramatically reduce — income-tax rates for self-employed people. You will want to push as much income as possible into 2017 to take advantage of the lower rates to come. And if Congress does nothing to reduce tax rates, you have lost nothing.

Plan for Your Big Tax Savings. If the incoming administration lives up to its promise to slash income-tax rates for self-employed people, corporations and passthrough entities in 2017, you are going to have lots more cash to play with. There are two ways you can deal with this.

The initial impulse will be to give yourself a raise and take that long-promised 'round-the-world cruise with your spouse. But the smarter folks will plow that windfall tax savings back into their business and make them better, perhaps by buying new equipment, updating a tired store layout or hiring an employee who will do the grunt work so you can work on rather than in your business. If done wisely, that kind of spending may generate even more income than the tax savings.

Don't Kill off Obamacare Before Trump Does. The current wisdom is that Congress is likely to radically restructure (or outright kill) Obamacare in 2017. Until Congress actually does something, however, all of the Obamacare mandates for 2017 remain in place, and you must comply with them. As with the two previous resolutions, don't count your chickens until they hatch.

For an overview of your responsibilities as an employer, visit http://obamacare.net/obamacare-employer-mandate.

Do Your Annual Legal Review. It isn't enough to hire a good lawyer and pray you don't get sued. Every business has laws and regulations you need to know about, and it's your responsibility to learn about them so you can prevent lawsuits before they happen. Take your lawyer to lunch sometime in January, tell him or her everything your business did last year and is planning to do this year, and find out what laws have changed since last year.

Sign 'Em Up, Nail 'Em Down. You've got a part-time salesperson or administrative assistant working in your business one or two days a week. While he's there, you tell him what to do, when to do it and how to do it. You believe he is an independent contractor, so you don't withhold money from his paycheck each week. Bad idea! The IRS is very likely to look at him as a part-time employee, and it will come down on you like Thor's hammer if it finds out. Now's the time to have this person sign a one-page employment agreement that's effective Jan. 1, 2017 (your attorney can draft this for a couple hundred dollars), and add him to your payroll.

What should the agreement say? At the very least, it should clearly state that the employee serves at will and can be terminated at any time, with or without a reason.

Become a Local Celebrity. Do anything and everything you can to generate positive local press and PR for your business. Volunteer to speak at local business luncheons. Sponsor a charity event at your business location. If you run a butcher shop, call your local cable-TV news show and volunteer to do a segment on how to carve your holiday turkey — people love that stuff, and news reporters love it when you make their life easier by suggesting story ideas.

However you do it, get out in front of your marketplace and let them see you. If you aren't visible to your customers 24/7, you are invisible.

Target Your Social Media Marketing. We all accept that social media marketing is important. But most of us don't do enough, post things in the wrong places or post the same things in too many places.

This is the year you should find out what social media tools are pulling for your business, and which aren't. Hire a social media consultant to help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of the major platforms, set aside an hour a day for social media postings and commit to doubling your current fan base by the end of 2017.

More next week ...

Cliff Ennico ([email protected]) is a syndicated columnist, author and former host of the PBS television series "Money Hunt." This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our webpage at www.creators.com.