If you run a business, or if you’re thinking about opening one, then it is vitally important to consider how you will handle taxes. After all, taxes for a business are a very different thing from the individual taxes that everyone files. But you might wonder what value you get from hiring someone to do them for you, and if you’d be better off just filing the taxes yourself. Well, here are a few reasons your company definitely needs to hire a tax professional.
Tax Season Never Ends
Taxes are due by April 15th; pretty much everyone in America is aware of that. For businesses, though, this isn’t the only deadline. There are quarterly deadlines, multiple annual deadlines, even, for some businesses, monthly deadlines. Even worse, the deadlines aren’t standard, and different businesses will have different deadlines. Using a tax professional can make sure you don’t miss any, and prevent you from having to keep an eye on taxes year-round.
There Are More Variables
When filing an individual tax return, you pretty much know what to do. You have a single form, the same one that every other worker gets, and you pay whatever percentage you have to for your bracket. For businesses, however, there are a number of different forms that you might have to use, depending on your type of business. Furthermore, calculating tax rates for a business is much more complex than for an individual, so a corporate tax return filed in Yonkers, NY area for a restaurant would be completely different from a corporate tax return filed in Wheaton, NE for a factory, even if both businesses make the exact same profit. If a server and a factory line worker in those places makes the same amount, though, their returns would look very similar.
You’ll Probably Miss Deductibles
Finding deductibles as an individual is pretty easy. You spent some money on work clothes, maybe gas mileage or some tools, and that can all be deducted. But when you’re running a business, there are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of things that can be deducted. Without a competent tax professional, you can miss them, and pay more than you have to.
Above all, if you run a business, you need to hire a professional because you can’t afford to make mistakes. When you’re filing an individual return, most of the work has already been done for you, the taxes taken out of your paycheck already. You’re pretty much just checking the work and making sure everything was done right. But when you run a business, you have to send in the taxes actively. Everything is on you to make sure that you are taxed properly, and the consequences for mistakes can be dire.
