Accounting Tips Guides

Tax time is just around the corner and so now is the time to know how to prepare to file your taxes. How often have you questioned yourself at the last minute wondering if you had everything you needed for your taxes?

Even when the tax laws change almost yearly the basic never change. So there is no reason why this information isn’t all ready in its usable form.

You will need your employment earning records, as well as the correct forms for interest, mortgage, charitable donations, and anything else. If you have all kinds of investments you will want to have your trade information handy to calculate capital gains and losses. Plus you will want to have all the information listed below.

1. Personal Data - you need to have you social security number and full name, birth date, and address.

2. Marital Status - this quick question simply requires a tick mark in the appropriate box.

3. Employment & Income Data - you will need your earnings records for the year, partnership and trust income information, retirement benefits, pensions, and annuities. Make sure that you have any paper work that is required.

4. Alimony - If you have paid or received alimony it belongs on your tax return. You will need your ex-spouses social insurance number. As the payer it will be reduce your income and as the payee it will increase your income.

5. Jury Duty Pay - If you did jury you would have got pittance pay but never the less it needs to go on your tax return. There’s just no income that is exempt from the tax return.

6. Gambling & Lottery Winnings - The casino or lottery authorities will provide you with the form that you need for your winnings.

7. Prizes & Awards - The award presenter will provide you with the correct form and information regarding your win.

8. Scholarships - You will require the appropriate paper work as scholarships must appear on your tax return.

9. You will need to provide your full mailing address and you will have to mark whether you own or rent. Your mortgage holder will send you the paperwork.

10. Real Estate Sales - If you sell your home you may have either a capital gains or capital lost. Your realtor or lender should send the appropriate paperwork.

11. Financial assets - any financial information that needs to be captured on your income tax should be collected now. This can include stocks, bonds, and other financial assets.

12. Medical Expenses - make sure you have all your receipts gathered for your medical costs for the year. Prescription drugs, prosthesis, and other approved equipment.

Tax time is upon us and as with every year it seems to have sneaked up without us even being aware. These 12 tips on how to prepare to file your taxes will help have you organized with all the materials you will need from beginning to end. After all isn’t it a game of cat and mouse and don’t you want to be the winner? In this case the winner adds more to their pocket book.

Terry Fitzroy is a professional writer and reviewer. For more information on how to file your taxes online go to http://www.taxengine.com/

Small businesses rely heavily on maintaining a good cash flow and having their clients pay on time. When a majority of small businesses are dealing with checks written against insufficient funds, that is indeed bad news for small businesses everywhere.

Recent studies have shown that small, medium and large companies have had many bounced checks. Micro companies, with less than 10 employees, have been less affected.

This frequently happens when someone pays a business by check for goods or services. The business deposits the check into its bank. The prudent business owner checks that the check has cleared and writes out new checks based on the money that is in the business bank account. It later turns out that the check may not have cleared at all and the business owner is now overdrawn and in debt. This means steep bank charges and makes it less likely that business facilities will be extended in the future.

Understanding The Check Clearing System

Most people know that a check takes anywhere from three to seven working days to clear. The date that a check clears depends on:

1. The currency in which the check is written. For example, US Dollar checks clear more quickly than checks written in French francs.

2. Whether the bank that has issued the check belongs to the same group of companies as the recipient bank. Checks usually take longer to clear when paid outside the banking group.

3. Whether the check is paid in on a business day.

What most people don’t know is that most banks ‘clear’ checks when the normal clearing period has elapsed. This sometimes happens before the bank has verified that the funds are available. The bank makes the amount of the check available for withdrawal but it hasn’t really cleared.

Some unscrupulous people can use this to their advantage. For example, they could pay by check for goods or services, write the wrong amount on the check, ask for a refund and disappear with the money well before the check clearing process is complete. When the original check bounces, it is the small business that is left facing an angry bank manager and a large bill.

Payment Help For Businesses

Fortunately, there are now some fairly basic and relatively inexpensive ways for businesses to receive money from their customers. Here are a few “Do’s” and “Don’ts” for you to follow. You can minimize or eliminate your bad check losses if you stop trouble before it starts.

1. Seek out and retain the advice of a competent Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firm. If you think you have a leaky pipe in your basement, you wouldn’t want to fix it yourself, would you? (Remember “The Bill Cosby Show” episodes?) A CPA is a professional that is trained to fix leaky financial systems. Retaining a CPA not only can guard your business from bad check writing, but also may catch and flag down a whole host of uncontrolled debits against your checking accounts.

2. Convert your accounts receivable systems to one or more trusted automated systems. These will ensure that secure funds are being deposited into your accounting system for the goods you have sold or the services you have rendered.

3. Your CPA accounting firm can provide you with many leads with which you can build secure money transfer capability into your financial system. Your bank can also provide very valuable assistance. It’s just a matter of doing some digging for advice and answers.

Business owners who are worried about being left with a large paper check debt should consider getting their customers to adopt one of these bill pay systems where possible. This will reduce the high business cost of bounced checks. As incentives, the business can advertise a number of “freebies” to its customers. In that manner, we all win.

Bob Carper is a veteran information systems consultant with an MBA from Pitt. For additional information go to All About Webconferencing or Effective Web Design. You may also e-mail Bob at robertcarper06@comcast.net

There is nothing worse than preparing Income Taxes and finding that there were many deductions we didn’t keep track of. Not keeping track of deductions can be very costly come tax time. It is very important to keep good records all year round.

For every dollar you don’t deduct, you could be paying up to 35% back to Uncle Sam. If the dollar has been spent, taxes shouldn’t have to be paid on it. Think of the productivity of your business if you could put 35% of your income back into your business rather than in the hands of politicians. What kind of advertising campaign could you do with 35% extra cash flow every month. With a little organization and planning this can be possible.

Most business owners remember to take the big obvious deductions such as cost of goods sold, materials, tools, supplies, and employee expenses. But often times it is the small seemingly insignificant deductions that can make or break a company. Lone Peak Business Solutions has the 10 most commonly missed business deductions.

1. Advertising - Business cards, newspaper ads, information packets you hand out, free samples, flyers, product testing, videos and CD’s.

2. Children - Money paid to children for helping with such things as delivering flyers, product, stuffing envelopes, cleaning office and car, etc.

3. Dues and Subscriptions - Dues to professional organizations and magazines that have to do with your trade or business.

4. Educational Expense - Classes or seminars that you take to improve your business.

5. Gifts - Gifts to clients and associates.

6. Laundry and Cleaning - This includes uniforms and Protective clothing and also your clothing when you are out of town.

7. Travel - Hotels, airfare, cab fare, parking, cleaning while away from home, trip log.

8. Home Office - A home office must be a separate room in your home to do business and accounting. Part of your living room or bedroom will not count. A percentage of utility Bills, home owners insurance, property tax, mortgage interest, refinance fees, repairs and maintenance, cleaning supplies, office decor, etc. are deductible. You find out the percentage by dividing the square footage of the office by the square footage of the entire house.

9. Mileage or Vehicle - There are two ways to take a vehicle expense. One is to take the mileage you use when picking up product, supplies, office supplies, meetings, handing out advertising or business cards, meals and entertaining clients, etc. The other way is to take the expense of using the vehicle: fuel, parts, mechanics, oil changes, etc. Along with taking expenses, you can also depreciate the vehicle.

10. Telephone - Cell phone, long distance calls on home phone, extra phone lines into home for business, fax or Internet.

Items such as paper clips, bank charges, credit card charges and home office expense seem small and unimportant at the time, but multiply those little things over a year or two and then multiply it times 35% and it can add up to quite a bit of money that should be in your pocket rather than in the government’s pocket.

Along with keeping track of expenses it is important to evaluate your income and expenses on at least a quarterly basis. This allows you to determine if too much is being spent any one place. It allows you to determine if all the deductions that can be are being claimed. It allows you to determine how to better increase sales and decrease costs.

Christopher Anderson is part owner of Lone Peak Business Solutions, Inc. He wants to share his success as a business owner with others who desire to own their own business. He also believes that the economy is stronger with more business owners, and as a result, he is focused on helping business owners succeed.