Small Business Guide to Tax Savings

Tax season is many things, but no one describes it as fun. In our combined 25+ years of accounting and media experience we’ve seen the gamut of incredible and incredibly bad situations. Whether you’ve suffered from being unprepared, overwhelmed, or confused, we’ve been there with clients before, and we’re not going to let you go through it alone!

That's why we're going over some of the strategies we discuss in our free Tax Savings Guide.

Whatever the reason you dread tax time, we have ways that you can save yourself both headaches and money.

Tips to Save on Your Small Business Taxes:

Below are a couple of ways to help you save money on your small business tax return. Secure more deductions on your tax return and be less stressed in the process; it’s easier than you think! If you’re not familiar with the perks of good bookkeeping, you should check out this blog post breaking down exactly why it is so useful to your business.

Business vs Personal Expenses

It might seem like a good idea to do business and personal finances in the same bank account, but when it comes time to make sense of your books and pay your taxes, your work is going to be very unpleasant. You should at the very least, have a separate checking and credit card account for your small business, and ideally a savings account too!

It will take you significantly longer... if you have to go through every bank statement and separate out all of your personal expenses from those deductible business ones. And this practice leaves you open to errors and forgetting things.

Getting Organized

We won’t dictate the way you have to organize your business, but we want to inspire you to keep all of your business finance documents in one place.

You can use a filing system, digital storage, or even Macgyver your own contraption for easy-to-use document sorting. In our office we use a very simple three file storage system for our document management.   And we’re excited to share it with you!

1. Start with a way to keep track of ALL of your “to do” documents.... like bills to pay, supplies to order, and forms to send.
2. Periodically (hopefully no more than twice per month) go through this one folder and take care of everything you can. Pay those bills, complete those surveys, reply to those RSVPs, etc...
3. Once everything is taken care of.... The document should go into a "To Scan" folder because you are done with it and it can go away!
4. Speaking of "going away" you should periodically scan the "to scan" folder, once the documents are scanned, they should get moved over to a "to shred" folder.
5. And occasionally you should have a shredding party (we do this when the folder is FULL). 
6. Now we know.... Some documents must be kept, so keep secure storage for your important “to save” documents like auto or real estate purchases.  We keep these documents in a FIRE safe.

Above are just 2 of the 6 tax savings strategies we have put together in our FREE guide. You can download our FREE guide and get instant access to all of our favorite tax savings strategies by clicking below. 

Download Your Free Guide Now

Look Forward to Seeing You Back Here Soon!

Next week we’ll jump back into bookkeeping set up with a detailed look into the Chart of Accounts and how to use Bank Reconciliations to keep your books in great shape. Even if you’ve never reconciled books before, you’ll be able to understand what it means and why you need it!

Disclaimer This article presents general information and is not intended to be tax or legal advice.  Refer to IRS publications and discuss possible tax deductions with your tax preparer.