1. Are you self-employed?
Whenever you have income from a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, S Corporation or C corporation, ensuring that you have accurate accounting and bookkeeping processes in place to serve as the foundation of solid quarterly tax estimates and ultimately for your annual tax filings is essential for both your business's success as well as for full compliance with your own personal income tax obligations.
Crucial issues such as how you pay yourself out of the earnings from your business, whether or not you have to pay self-employment tax on that income in addition to regular federal, state and local income tax, and how you go about putting money into and taking money out of your business is very important.
Whether you own an unincorporated sole proprietorship or a disregarded single member LLC and file a Schedule C, are an owner/officer of an S Corporation and pay yourself compensation subject to W-2 withholdings, are a partner in a partnership or member of a multi-member LLC and receive/issue yourself a Schedule K-1 or have an ownership interest in the stock of a Corporation and receive/issue yourself a Form 1099, there is essential accounting, bookkeeping and tax compliance work that needs to be done correctly and timely.
Tax Preparation and Tax Planning for Individuals
Get in touch and schedule a free appointment to discuss your tax needs.
Are you looking for a CPA to prepare your individual tax returns?
If you are looking for a new tax professional, get in touch and schedule an appointment today to discuss your individual tax situation.
Aaron prepares tax returns for individuals including federal, state and local returns and will be happy to discuss tax planning items with you and prepare quarterly estimates if applicable to your tax situation.
A few of the items that you will want to have on hand for a meeting include:
1. Your prior-year tax returns.
2. Your most recent quarterly tax estimates and all supporting documents (if applicable).
3. If you own your own business, you will want to have the final prior-year financial statements and the most recent accounting information available for the business.
4. If you have had a significant event occur in the current tax year, such as the sale of a home, you will want to bring your supporting documents related to that event or transaction.
2. Do you have rental properties?
If you have income from rental properties, you know the importance of accounting for the income and expenses from each rental property and keeping that data segregated.
Having an effective process in place for accounting and bookkeeping for rental properties is essential for having the most accurate tax filings prepared and to ensure that you are able to take advantage of mechanisms in the tax law such as tax depreciation deductions for the capital expenditures you make for these properties, as well as tax depreciation deductions for the cost of the properties themselves.
Aaron has extensive experience in dealing with the accounting for and taxation of rental properties. From dealing with the accounting and bookkeeping associated with your rental properties to tracking your tax depreciation deductions and dealing with more complex issues such as the passive activity tracking rules, having a good handle of on the tax and accounting processes relating your rental properties is eesential.
3. Do you own stocks, bonds or other investments?
If you actively buy and sell securities such as individual shares of stocks, bonds or other investments on the open market, there are important tax considerations that must be taken into account, specifically as it relates to your "tax basis" in the securities themselves (i.e. how you received ownership of the securities (purchase, gift or inheritance)), the original purchase price and/or fair market value of the investment as well as how long you have held the investment.
Additionally, there are various tax rules surrounding the purchase, sale and re-purchase of securities within various windows of time that are important to understand in order to ensure that you are reporting gains and losses on these investments correctly on your personal tax returns.
Be sure to have an in-depth discussion surrounding these investments with your tax professional when performing tax planning and tax preparation for the tax year.