Budgeting

Quarterly Estimated Tax Payments; Do You Need To Make Them?

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If you own a small business, you may already know that there are requirements to pay something towards what’s known as a quarterly estimated tax. In essence, this is an advance on taxes you may owe by the end of the year to both the IRS and whatever state you live in.

Here’s the thing. It’s not actually a requirement. You don’t have to pay anything; you don’t even have to acknowledge it until tax time. What it offers you is a chance to get ahead on your taxes to lessen your tax liability when the new year comes.

It’s a smart thing to do if you’re making a lot of money and have a significant cash flow. By budgeting your quarterly tax payments, which are due in April, June, September and January, you lessen the impact of having to come up with a large payment by the middle of April every year, especially since you might not have any idea just how much you owe until your accountant has taken a look at everything.

However, if your income is pretty low, or you have a lot of expenses that will drastically reduce your income, you might not have to pay anything, and if you do you might get it all back. Of course it’s better to be safe than sorry, so sending something in wouldn’t be a bad idea.

This advice changes if you owe money, or if either the IRS or the state writes you asking you about it. If you had a banner year the previous year both entities might wonder why you’re not paying anything during these quarterly periods. Unless they specifically tell you that you should pay something you don’t have to worry about these letters. Sometimes they’ll send you payment coupons; once again, unless they tell you they’re looking for money you don’t have to deal with these either.

How are you handling this issue? If you want to talk more about it don’t hesitate to call our offices.
 

Accounting

5 Things Your Accountant Needs From You For Your Business Taxes

Even though it’s late for those of you who aren’t filing for a tax extension, the fact of the matter is that when it’s time for your accountant to do your taxes, there are things you’re going to want to have ready to give him or her so they can do their job properly. Listed below are the 5 most critical things they’re going to need, though not necessarily in this order.

Mileage – Even if you use your vehicle for personal reasons as well, keeping track of your business mileage is very important because it will offer legitimate deductions that will help bring your tax bill down. If there are places you go all the time you should have an estimated mileage count for that, and then you just have to totally track your mileage for anything outside of that. You only get to count what you don’t get paid back for expenses. And if you used a rental car, you don’t get to claim mileage.

Receipts – Anything that’s somewhat business related, you need to make sure you keep your receipts for it. This includes business meals, stamps, any supplies you might use for business, buying a new smartphone, etc. If you need to you can write little notes on them; for instance, I write little notes on all my receipts for business meals in case anyone wanted to track who I was meeting for business purposes.

Bank Statements – Hopefully you have a bank account that’s specific for your business, which is easy to use. For my purposes, I also give my accountant my personal account statements, just in case they see something that pops out that they can use. Your bank statements will show any payments you got for the year, as well as some of your business expenses. You’ll probably need to go through your payments and expenses and highlight where some of the money came from if you earned it in different ways so they can categorize it for you.

Any statements showing estimated tax payments – I bring this one up because if you’re like me, you don’t always pay your estimated taxes from your bank account. I paid some of mine with a credit card, and thus I had to go back and retrieve those statements online to give to my accountant for my records.

Any pertinent W-2′s or 1099′s – Truthfully, your accountants can do your taxes if you don’t have these statements by using your business bank account information, but any of these you have makes it easier for them. The times I didn’t use them was when they either came late or were incorrect.

Budgeting

The Basics Of Budgeting

Whether you’re in business or you’re worried about your home finances, budgeting can help bring peace of mind to you and help you know where your money is going. It gives you the opportunity to pay bills, save money, and even figure out if you need more money or to control expenses so you can sustain yourself.

budgeting cake

Budgeting sounds really hard and boring to most people, which is probably why they don’t do it. If you have a lot of debt you probably don’t want to know about it, but you can’t address your issues without knowledge; that goes for everything in life. Budgeting isn’t hard, although there are aspects of it that can be complicated. We’re going to give you the easiest way to go about it, which is a great start.
Continue reading The Basics Of Budgeting →

Accounting

Why We Teach Quickbooks

T. L. Wall Accounting helps businesses and individuals learn how to budget and track their money. We offer services where we can do it for them, but often they want to do it for themselves. When people go looking for a solution that will help them track these things on their own, we recommend and teach Quickbooks.

Quickbooks is business accounting software that can also be used for home budgeting. There is a learning curve to it, but most people can learn how to use it in a day or so. It allows you to track income and expenses, categorize them so you know what they are when you run reports, and you can even use it to create checks so you don’t have to go out and buy them from anyone. If you run a large office you can network it so that everyone has access or you can run the program as a standalone.

This is very powerful software. You can generally categorize in 3 categories, depending on whether you want to track bills, revenue or employees. It interacts with Microsoft Excel and Word. You can also print information out in a pdf format, in case you want something that can’t be altered. You can use it to send out invoices. You can use it as a contact management system, as it will interact with Microsoft Outlook as well.

In other words, if you want total control of all the financial aspects of your business or personal life, Quickbooks will get it done. Of course, it all still takes time, but if you want to know what’s going on at a moment’s notice, this program is great to have. And yes, there are tutorials, but if you need help, that’s why we’re here. We provide both group and individual training, customized for your needs.

Accounting

Greetings From Terri Wall

Hello, and welcome to the T. L. Wall Accounting Blog. Our purpose with this blog will not only be to present services to you that we can provide, but also to provide you with financial information we feel will be pertinent to all of our clients and to anyone else that’s looking for financial information. We expect to gear more of our information to businesses, but we will also talk about issues as they might pertain to individuals as well, such as budgeting and taxes.

Our office is located in North Syracuse on Route 11 but we handle the finances of small businesses through the Syracuse and Onondaga County area and the surrounding counties as well such as Oswego, Oneida and Madison counties. We even have some long distance clients, those who have moved yet love our services so much that they’ll mail us what we need to take care of them.

Come along with us on this journey and, if you ever need to talk to someone about accounting, bookkeeping, or tax services, as well as a host of other services we can provide, please feel free to contact us at 315-314-7253 of by email at terri@tlwallaccounting.com. Let the fun begin!

Accounting & Financial Advice from the Syracuse NY area