The 3 Most Common End of Year Tax Mistakes for Businesses

| 1 min read

The 3 Most Common End of Year Tax Mistakes for Businesses

There is not a company anywhere that wants to pay more tax than they legally have to. That is why it is so important to make sure that bookkeeping mistakes are not resulting in overpaid taxes.

Income taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes and any other state or local tax that relies on your financial information can be overpaid if the data is not correct. This can total up to a great deal of money. 

The one deterrent to overpaid taxes is to have a highly trained bookkeeper.

#1 Mistakes in Payroll Reporting

Payroll reporting can be a problem if the bookkeeper does not understand how to enter the data correctly. The gross wages need to be on the income statement not the net paid out.

Often this is missed when a non-trained person handles the books.

Fixed assets need to be properly recorded. Depreciation is only correct if the asset has not been expensed in error. 

Overpaid Taxes

#2 Improper Reconciliation

Balance sheet accounts need to be reconciled monthly. By year end it takes a lot of work to go back through twelve months to find out a double posting was made or that the cash account has not been reconciled. Duplicate entries will throw tax calculations off.

#3 Hiring Untrained Bookkeepers

Untrained bookkeepers often do not understand how an entry can cause so much time and trouble.

Trained bookkeepers know that a prior year adjustment is not something to consider lightly. These kinds of changes can cause major tax problems and are not easy to find and fix.

Small business can sometimes have a bookkeeper that is not fully trained. There are a number of reasons this happens.

When small businesses first get started they may not think they need bookkeeping help.

This means that the owner or the office manager may well be doing the accounting along with their other jobs. This puts additional work on someone who already has a full time job.

Could you be handing your Accounts Payable better?

Get a free analysis to find out.

Schedule a Free Analysis

Bookkeeping mistakes can really bring on the penalties and interest when dealing with sales tax.

Knowing who to collect sales tax from and who to pay it to is what a trained bookkeeper can do without generating fines and interest.

One of the best things a business can do to keep their taxes correct is to have a trained bookkeeper or a bookkeeping service. 

remote-bookkeeping2w

An Affordable Bookkeeping Alternative to a CFO

Outsourcing your bookkeeping is more affordable than you would think. We save you money the moment you hire us by cutting out the expensive cost of hiring an in-house CFO.

Working with a remote bookkeeping service will still provide you with all the value you could get from an in-office bookkeeper but at a fraction of the cost.

Learn more

Learn How We Can Impact Your Business Growth

You’ve got your company’s best interest in mind. Guess what? So do we! You can rest assured that we will work closely with you to create actionable business plans and accurate financial reporting. We offer our toolkit of financial intelligence that will be your greatest asset for business growth.

Contact an Advisor