>Tax Day 2009!!

Your tax deadline is 11:59pm tonight! Don't forget to file your taxes or file for an extension!!

Business Mileage

When keeping a mileage record for reimbursement of business mileage be sure to indicate in your journal what the purpose was for each trip. It is not enough to just mark it as 'business'. If you are audited the IRS will not accept that as well documented.
In other words if you are, for example, showing a client a property - indicated that including client name and the location of the property.
It's always better to over document than not provide enough information.

California Sales Tax

California companies take heed! The sales tax will be increasing to 8.75% effective April 1st, 2009. This is supposed to be a "temporary" increase through 2011. We'll see how temporary that is.
Remember to change your records so that you'll be all set when it comes time to submit your payments to the State Board of Equalization.

The Dreaded Tax Crunch

April 15th is rapidly approaching. Do you have your receipts and bank statements ready to go? Did you plan ahead this year and use accounting software to make your tax prep easier?

If you are running your own business, no matter how small, it really pays to organize your accounting using financial software such as QuickBooks. You may think you don't have time to do it yourself and that may very well be true. But can you afford not to do it?

Hiring a freelance bookkeeping professional can save you money in the long run. It is much more cost effective to have a professional bookkeeper keep your books up to date then to pay your Certified Public Accountant to straighten out your bookkeeping while he/she is doing your taxes.

If you are all set for 2008 taxes, think ahead for 2009 and be prepared!

Mileage Rates

Last July the IRS raised the business mileage rate to $0.585 per mile due to the rapidly rising fuel prices. Now that the price of gas has significantly decreased the IRS has lowered the mileage rate for 2009 to $0.55 per mile for business use.

The mileage rate for medical use is now $0.24 per mile.

The mileage rater for charitable purposes is $0.14 per mile.

New Year, New Business

By now you should be through the headache of year-end payroll reporting requirements and sending out the 1099's to your eligible vendors. Did you get caught in a time crunch? Or miss some of those very time-sensitive filing dates?
Maybe you should consider out-sourcing your bookkeeping needs so that you don't need to pay late penalties and interest charges next year. It can be a cost effective solution. A few hours a month may be all you require to get a handle on your books.

Shareholder Payments

IRS audits now routinely review S corp payments to shareholders to see if payroll taxes are being avoided by treating payments to shareholder-officers as loans or shareholder distributions of cash or property.

An officer performing services for a corporation is entitled to payment; those payments are wages. For federal employment tax purposes, corporate officers are employees.

Avoiding employment taxes by treating compensation as cash distributions, expense reimbursements, or loans rather than as wages is illegal.

Make sure you are paying your shareholders correctly! Get a check-up of your books.