If you’re looking for a firm that will focus on your individual needs, and always treat you like a client who matters, look no further. Our firm is large enough to offer a full range of professional services, but small enough to give you the individual attention that you deserve.
We will thoroughly and conscientiously study your personal situation, and tailor our advice to your specific needs.
- Tax Preparation & Planning
- Sales Tax Services
- Bookkeeping
- Payroll Services
- IRS Representation
- Accounting Information Systems
Accounting Information Systems
Every business needs a method to tabulate, categorize, and present their Accounting Data. For some small businesses, a hand written ledger of income and expenses will do. For others, a computerized accounting system is better. Choosing the right software is the first step. Learning how to maximize the software’s effectiveness is the second. Our goal is to help you use your Accounting Information System to learn more about your own business, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of tax preparation and planning.
Christopher is a Quickbooks ® ProAdvisor. Quickbooks has taken the accounting software business by storm and is easily the most recognizable of the accounting software programs available to consumers. We provide all levels of Quickbooks support, from Starting up a Company and designing your chart of accounts to integrating Point of Sale equipment with your Quickbooks inventory. We can even assist you in setting up a Quickbooks Online company than can be securely accessed from where ever in the world you happen to be doing business.
We also work with clients who have other types of Accounting Software such as, Quicken, Peachtree, and Sage. Please give us a call and let us help you navigate choosing, setting up, and maintaining your Accounting Information System.
Bookkeeping
If your business does not currently have accounting staff or if your business is outgrowing its current bookkeeping system, we can provide comprehensive bookkeeping services to ensure the smooth operation of the financial side of your business. As your business needs grow and change, we can provide input and planning assistance to make sure your accounting and financial systems keep pace with your business needs.
We offer a wide range of bookkeeping services. You can bring us your bills and we will print checks for your signature and you may have us do your invoicing. Or we can provide you with basic check registers and we will post your checks and receipts and provide you with a monthly or quarterly financial statement. If you want to do more yourself, we can assist you with setting up accounts and a format appropriate to your business’s tax return. We can assist your in-house bookkeeper with proper posting of income and expenses so you will understand your gross income, cost of sales, fixed expenses, and net profit as the year progresses. Many owners of small businesses do not have regular monthly or quarterly financial statements, or do not know how to read them. So tax time brings awful surprises. Many years ago the editor of Pacific Business News wrote, “The language of business is numbers.” If you do not know your numbers, we can help.
IRS Representation
The last thing anyone wants is an IRS audit. Fortunately, as the government gives the IRS more work and less funding, audits are decreasing to less than 1%. However, if you are the one selected, then it is 100% . The only way to avoid an audit totally is to report every nickel you receive and never take any deductions at all.
You should ask your tax preparer if they will represent you in an audit. You may be surprised to find they don’t “do audits.” An IRS audit can be an intimidating and complex process. If you or your business face an IRS audit, we can bring to bear years of experience in dealing with tax matters and IRS audit procedures to ensure that you are properly represented when dealing with the IRS and other tax authorities.
Never go to an audit alone. They are called tax collectors, not tax mediators. In fact, if we prepare your return, we may go in your place, because we are Enrolled Agents and that is what we do.
The tightening of the IRS budget seems to have resulted in a lot more computer generated letters from the IRS, some being “correspondence” audits usually related to a single deduction. Other letters are simply nastygrams that need to be answered promptly. Since most tax returns now must be filed electronically, your return is going directly into the IRS computer and that computer generating a preset letter to you, without any human intervention. We provide the human intervention, answering that letter with a proper response, which must be read by some living soul in the IRS.
Payroll Services
Many people can do their own bookkeeping until it comes to payroll. Constantly changing federal, state and local laws and tax regulations make payroll management an ongoing challenge for business owners. In fact payroll can present such problems that we only provide this service to clients with whom we do other work, like income tax returns. Our payroll service begins with calculating paychecks and includes preparing federal and state withholding deposits, federal forms 941 and 940, state withholding and state unemployment insurance forms, W-2 Forms, Workers Compensation and Temporary Disability forms. We do not do payroll for clients with over 10 employees. It is more cost efficient to outsource those to a bank program.
Sales Tax Services
State and local tax authorities are looking to maximize sales tax collections. In some states, like Hawaii, “gross income” tax revenues are greater than net income taxes. We can help you understand and manage your Hawaii excise tax obligations and prepare excise tax returns in an efficient and timely manner.
Most people do not know that Hawaii does not have a sales tax. Hawaii has an Excise Tax. The difference is that a sales tax is typically a percentage tax on the sales of tangible personal goods like clothing, or toys, or furniture. An excise tax is a percentage tax on the right to do business. Hawaii’s Excise Tax is on everything: tangible goods, food, services, rents, contracting, commissions, even interest earned by a business.
In fact, Hawaii’s Excise Tax is so unique that we have to make adjustments to the standard Quickbooks program to make it correct. One of the very unique elements of Hawaii’s Excise Tax is that you pay tax on the tax you collect from the customer. If you have a vacation rental, the tax calculation is even more complex.
Tax Preparation & Planning
We provide extensive tax preparation and planning services. This includes Individual (Form 1040) income taxes of any complexity, corporate income taxes, both C Corporations and S Corporations, Partnership returns, Trust tax returns and Estate tax returns. We also prepare prior year returns for those who have “fallen behind “ in their tax filing responsibilities. The major benefit of having a professional prepare your return is that we are here year round to help you plan for the future, address changes in your finances, answer questions, and help you to make the right decision on a tax question.
We do not charge clients for telephone calls. If we can give a client the advice needed to avoid making the wrong tax decision in a couple minutes, there is no fee. However, not all “one quick questions” have one quick answer, and you may need to come into the office for a meeting that will incur a fee.
Effective tax preparation and planning can help you to minimize your future tax liability. We can help you proactively manage both your personal and your business tax issues, including understanding how upcoming business opportunities impact your tax status and vice versa. Not all tax planning opportunities are readily apparent. By having us on your team, you are more likely to benefit from those opportunities. We understand how the latest federal, state and local tax legislation and other developments affect you and your business and we are constantly identifying new ways to reduce federal, state or local tax liabilities.
We can also help you choose or change your type of business tax entity: sole proprietorship, Corporation, S Corporation, or Partnership. Many people do not know that an LLC is not a tax entity and that after forming an LLC, you must choose one of the above. We can discuss with you the pros and cons of each type. We can also help you to change your tax entity as your business changes.
Finally, we can advise you on the tax consequences of buying or selling a business. For example, for tax purposes one does not buy or sell “a business.” One buys or sells the “assets” of a business and how that sale is structured will determine how mush tax the seller pays and what kind of deductions the buyer gets.