Natural Disasters Equal ‘Miscellaneous Deductions’

If you’re like most people, you’ve looked over the list of deductible expenses listed as Miscellaneous Deductions for your Schedule A Itemized Deductions and seen the casualty and loss item, but have never actually had a loss that fit within those guidelines. That is actually something to be thankful for. The enormous losses that can come from a natural disaster is one of the items that can fit into those guidelines. Losses that you incur as a result of the natural disaster and are not reimbursed by insurance or other means can be used in the calculation of the allowable miscellaneous deduction. Read More »

Avoid Penalties for Late Payments and Filings of Taxes

One of the biggest, and unfortunately most common, mistakes small business owners make is making late tax deposits and late filing of tax returns. The IRS brings in plenty of revenue from penalties, and interest generated from these mistakes. It is worth the time to set procedures in place to make sure that tax filing and deposit deadlines are met.

There are generally two different issues, which result in IRS penalties being imposed on small companies. One is the genuine unintentional missing of deadlines and the other results from spending funds that should have been set aside for tax deposits, particularly payroll tax deposits. We’ll address each separately.

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During and After the Sales and Use Tax Audit

Preparing for a Sales and Use Tax Audit: Part 4

In Part One of this series, we discussed the initial contact with the auditor. In Part Two we covered two of the main areas that the auditor will be expecting to find errors in tax filings. Part Three listed the documentation that you should expect to provide with your tax returns for the audit period. In this segment, we will discuss some of the other issues which may cause an auditor to add an invoice to his report.

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Preparing for a Sales and Use Tax Audit: Part 3

In Part One of this series, we discussed the initial contact with the auditor in response to the notification of your upcoming audit. In Part Two we covered two of the main areas that the auditor will be expecting to find errors in tax filings, use tax payments on purchases and collections of adequate sales tax from your own sales. In this article we will discuss the documentation you should include with your sales tax returns for the audit period selected.

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