Author name: yen@bascexpertise.com

“I file my 1120-S every year, so I’m covered.” It sounds reasonable. Your accountant prepares the return. You sign it. The IRS accepts it. Another tax year is officially in the books. So you’re compliant, right? Not necessarily. Form 1120-S is an annual tax return. It is not a year-round operating system. Running an S

Imagine two S Corp owners. Same industry. Same $180,000 of business profit. Both pay themselves a salary and take additional money from the company as distributions. On the surface, they look similar. But if someone asked each owner one very simple question— “How did you determine your salary?” —only one has a good answer. And

Somewhere along the way, “once you hit $50,000 in profit, elect S Corp” became gospel. Business owners repeat it to each other. Social media repeats it. And, unfortunately, some advisors repeat it too. It sounds helpful because it gives you a clean number to watch for. There’s just one problem: It isn’t a rule. There

Arizona businesses know seasonality better than most. Between snowbird season, summer heat driving customers indoors (or out of state entirely), and tourism patterns that shift dramatically by month, a lot of local businesses deal with income that swings hard depending on the time of year. Bookkeeping for that kind of business needs a slightly different

If your slow season keeps catching you off guard — even though it happens every year — the problem usually isn’t the slow season itself. It’s that you don’t have a forecast, so it feels like a surprise every single time. Why “knowing” your slow season isn’t the same as planning for it A lot

Back-to-school season feels like a “consumer” thing — parents buying supplies, new clothes, that whole scramble. But if you run a small business, especially here in Arizona, this season quietly affects your cash flow too, whether you sell directly to families or not. Why this season hits small businesses harder than people expect Customer spending

You don’t need an accounting degree or an hour of free time to keep your books in decent shape. You need one habit, done consistently, for about fifteen minutes a month. Here’s exactly what it looks like. The habit: A monthly mini-review Once a month — same time every month works best, like the first

We get asked this question constantly: “Should I switch to an S-Corp to save on taxes?” And the honest answer is — maybe, but not always, and definitely not without doing the math first. Let’s talk through it like actual humans instead of tax jargon. What’s the appeal of an S-Corp, anyway? The big draw

Be honest with yourself for a second: when’s the last time you actually looked at your tax situation? If the answer is “sometime around April,” you’re in the same boat as most small business owners — and that’s completely normal. But August is actually a really good time to check back in, before the year

If you’ve ever tried to Google “Arizona sales tax” and ended up more confused than when you started, welcome to the club. Arizona doesn’t technically have a “sales tax” — it has something called Transaction Privilege Tax, or TPT. And yes, it’s basically sales tax with a different name and a few extra wrinkles. Let’s