A requirement for all businesses is to fill out and submit their federal tax returns every year, regardless of whether they make money or not. Since the tax code for businesses is complex and filling out the forms is so time consuming, most businesses opt to hire a CPA to complete their taxes. During tax season many CPAs can be challenged as they are dealing with many different clients all at once. To help their CPA during tax season, there are three things that a business could do.
One thing that a business could do to make tax season easier for their CPA is to provide all of your credit card records to your CPA. When you have a credit card processing report, it should be able to provide a consolidated records of all of the merchant accounts and other sales that have take place. The credit card processing reports should make it that much easier for the CPA to verify your revenue.
Beyond providing the direct records for your merchant accounts and other revenue sources, you should also provide your CPA with a copy of your yearend financial statements. All businesses should keep track of their financial performance and be able to provide an income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Giving these pieces of information to your CPA will ensure that they have the most accurate and current information possible when they are preparing your tax forms.
A business that is having their taxes prepared by a CPA could also make the CPA’s job easier by organizing all of your financial detail ahead of time. In many cases a CPA will need to have detailed records about your expenses, labor reports, sales reports, and other pieces of information to verify and confirm all of the information that is on your financial statements. One of the biggest challenges that a CPA can have is gathering all of this information. If you get all of this put together ahead of time, it could make a CPA’s job easier, which will allow them to work faster and ultimately save you money.