Business Tax Preparation

A business tax return is only as good as the books behind it. If your accounts are unreconciled or three months of transactions are sitting uncategorized, preparing an accurate return turns into a bookkeeping project first and a tax return second.

It starts with your books, not your return

We’d rather be honest about this up front: the returns that take the least time and turn up the fewest surprises belong to businesses whose books were current all year. If yours weren’t, we can still get you filed. It just means we’re reconstructing several months of activity before we can get to the actual tax work, which costs more and takes longer than it needs to.

What we need from you

Depending on your structure, that’s some combination of a profit and loss statement, balance sheet, bank and credit card statements, payroll records, fixed asset information, and last year’s return. If your books are current, this is a short list. If they’re not, we’ll help you get there. See Monthly Accounting Services.

Structure matters

Sole proprietorships, single-member LLCs, partnerships, S corporations, and C corporations are all taxed differently, and the right structure affects everything from how you pay yourself to your estimated tax obligations. If you’re not sure your current structure still makes sense, that’s worth a conversation, ideally before year-end.

S corporations get extra attention

An S corp return isn’t just one more form. Owner compensation, payroll, shareholder distributions, and your personal return all connect to each other. We look at the whole picture, not just the corporate filing in isolation.

Built for the businesses we actually serve

A lot of our business clients are contractors tracking job costs, restaurants and lodging businesses managing seasonal revenue, or professional service firms with fairly straightforward books. Each of those looks different at tax time, and we’ve prepared enough of each to know what questions to ask before the return is finished, not after.