Your taxes are more than a one-time-a-year endeavor, especially if you own a business. Running a business venture comes with additional tax due dates and the need to plan ahead to both meet those deadlines and ensure that you aren’t overpaying or underpaying with each filing. Failure to do so could jeopardize your business’ success and leave too much on the table for the IRS to pocket.

Any business owner looking to stay profitable and successful into the future should consider implementing a better tax plan, which can include any or all of the following:

Organizing Back-Office Processes: Failing to record and document financial transactions makes it unnecessarily difficult to file an accurate tax return. Without all of your business’ bookkeeping data in order, it’s easier to miss cash flow errors and file a tax return that gives the IRS too much or too little of your money. To ensure accurate tax filing, it’s important to first organize your tracking and recordkeeping systems. Clear and organized books make later tax filing a far more straight forward process.

Considering Tax Breaks: How do you know when you’re taking advantage of too few or too many tax breaks?  While they may be intimidating for some business owners, capitalizing on applicable tax deductions is a great way to prevent overpaying on your taxes. Credits are available for home businesses and even the fuel you use to attend business meetings and conferences. While it’s important to use business tax credits carefully, they can be important to reinforcing your overall tax plan.

Incorporation: The very method in which you pay your taxes depends on your business entity. While sole proprietors or partnership businesses have taxes factored into their personal tax return, setting up a corporation, or LLC, helps to reduce the tax strain of business ownership on your individual income tax return. If you haven’t yet incorporated your business and are interested in tax-saving strategies, incorporation may be at the top of your list.

Planning for Payroll and Sales and Use Taxes: Business taxes get additionally complicated for businesses who run payroll to pay employees or who operate in the retail and property niche. An effective tax plan considers all prospective tax payments and how this may affect what you are expected to pay throughout the course of the year and future years.

Hiring a CPA for Your Tax and Accounting Needs

It’s not uncommon for small business owners to need help doing all of the above. Working with an accounting team helps to take the responsibility of tax planning and preparation away from business owners, which is especially beneficial for those who are overwhelmed by the tax and accounting process or who are not familiar with bookkeeping in general. BASC can help your small business plan ahead for a successful tax season and stay organized and profitable into the future. For more information about tax planning and preparation in Mesa, contact our team.