You’re ‘Not’ Making These 5 Tax Mistakes, Are You?

1. You’re “Not” Making Your Estimated Payments

Or you’re making them, but just not on time. Or you’re making them, but you’re not paying in the full amount it. It never seems like you have enough cash. It physically repels to sign the check. It kills you that just when you see your business starting to thrive you get knocked back with a giant tax payment. But this is the law and many people try to pretend it’s not. If you make your payments late you’ll be subject to penalties and fines. If you don’t make your payments you’ll be subject to penalties, fines and a whopping tax bill next year when you file your returns. And if you don’t make your payment then here are two words for you: Wesley Snipes. The smart business people suck it up, schedule their tax payments with their other accounts payables and forecast this amount as a required quarterly disbursement along with everything else. Tax payments are not optional. Don’t make this mistake.

2. You’re “Not” Putting Enough Away In Your Retirement Plan

A recent survey found that 70 percent of business owners have their wealth tied up in their own businesses. Another report found that only 5 percent of companies with four or fewer employees offer a retirement plan, compared to 31 percent of companies with between 26 and 100 employees (which is still insanely low). The more retirement options you offer to your employees the more you can put away yourself. Not only that but many people still don’t fully take advantage of individual IRAs or even create Simple Employer Plans (SEPs) for themselves. Not only can this save taxes, but retirement plans are critical for diversifying your assets in case, God forbid, your own company falls on hard times. Put a plan in place. Now.

3. You Cling To Bad Stuff

It’s time to face it: that customer is never going to pay you. He says he will, you hope he will, it kills you that he hasn’t. But he won’t. And by the way, that pallet of calibrated switch-screws aren’t going to sell either. OK, you had good intentions when you bought it. But no one wants it. It was a bad buy. Move on. Write off the receivable. Write off the inventory. This will clear your head. It will clear some space on the floor. And it will provide a tax deduction for you too.

4. You’re Not Taking Advantage Of The Healthcare Tax Credit

OK, this is not such an enormous benefit and most people don’t qualify. That’s because to take advantage of this credit you can only employ less than 25 people and their average salary must be less than $50,000 per year. And you have to purchase health insurance. And (soon enough) from the government exchanges. But if you do qualify for this, you can get a credit of up to 50% on what you pay for your health insurance. And that’s a credit, which means you can carry it forward or backward to offset taxes in the past or future if you’re not making any money this year. If you do qualify and you haven’t taken advantage of this since 2010 then you should have a frank discussion with your accountant. If he’s still employed by you after this discussion then have him go back and amend your past returns to take advantage of this credit.

5. You’re ‘Not” Meeting Often Enough With Your Accountant

OK, he’s not the most exciting guy in the world. But this is a cost of doing business–meeting with your accountant (hopefully a Certified Public Accountant). And you need to do this at least quarterly. Yes, quarterly. Many have a “year end” tax meeting (which means late December or…January) which oftentimes just turns into a crying and moaning session about the state of America and our broken tax system. And it’s usually the accountant who’s doing the crying and moaning. By meeting with your CPA quarterly, sharing your numbers, discussing the future and (egads!) planning you will be able to consider the tax impacts of any significant business transaction you make before you make them in order to take the most advantage.

You’re not doing these things, are you? Thought not. Hey, join the crowd.

 

Source: Inc.