Most importantly, take time to organize your tax information. We help our clients with this process by giving them a tax organizer each year end. We feel it’s critical for them to fill it out completely and return it to us as soon as

possible. You don’t want your accountant to have to spend time filling out your tax organizer for you. His or her time is better spent interpreting what’s inside it. Quite simply, if your accountant doesn’t know the changes in your life over the past year, he or she will miss opportunities to save you money.  This same advice applies to small business owners. Small business owners should be diligent in ensuring that they have support for all of the numbers in the business’ financials. The less time that an accountant needs to spend on organizing a business’ accounting records, the more time they can spend on developing a strategy to save tax dollars and make the business more profitable.

Unlike a national chain, where typically only one person is doing the work once a year, a full-service CPA firm, such as Laciak>cpa, has a tax return review process in place. This means that your tax return is reviewed by a team of accountants with

different technical skills and experiences.  Our review team is exclusively made up of certified public accountants, each with an insider’s perspective on your business or personal financial situation.  If you develop an ongoing relationship with the right accountant, then you won’t have to get by with only a one-time meeting.  We take the time to learn your business and help you increase the bottom line as a result of all your hard work.

Anyone can enter numbers on the lines of a tax form. That’s why we encourage you to find an accountant who is more than a scorekeeper. Business owners need to make sure that they are working with a professional who is proactive in planning

for the end of the tax year so there won’t be any surprises. If you do not have some idea of the amount of tax you will owe before December 31st, then your accountant did not adequately do his or her job. You must also make sure that your accountant communicates to you the adjustments that he or she made to the business’ accounting records in preparing the tax return. Otherwise, your business records will not properly reflect what was reported to the IRS. Remember, the accounting records in the current year affect the accounting records in all future years. That’s way it is imperative for your accountant to provide you with the correct and final numbers. You need to make sure that all future business decisions are based upon accurate information so that next year’s tax preparation will not be hindered by an incorrect starting point.