Dealing with tax is, at best, a headache. At its worst, it can be a real nightmare!
This is why understanding how to file taxes for your small business properly is so important. What might seem like quite an innocuous miss from yourself will lead to taxes becoming a major problem later on. It’s so easy to make mistakes and errors with taxation that you do need to start investing time into understanding best practice.
It might not seem like a problem today, but down the line your taxation problems will come back to be a thorn in your side.
How to File Taxes for your Small Business
However, the actual process of filing taxes isn’t too hard. If you are interested in learning how to do it yourself then you merely need to follow these instructions. When done right, this will make a big difference to your taxation management.
- Start off by collecting all of your business records. This means having all of your records to make it easy to report earnings and expenses accordingly. It’s best to make a record of it all in a Spreadsheet or a notebook. This will help you calculate your income much easier and to help you manage to include every little detail.
- Now, you have to go and get the right forms to fill in. As ever with the IRS and similar, you have a mountain of paperwork to get through here. Determine the correct tax form that you need, ad get it from the official website. Many businesses, for example, will use a Sole Proprietorship form. This allows them to report all activity within the business using a Schedule D attachment in personal income tax returns.
- If you are a corporation, though, you need to prepare a tax return using a Form 1120.
- Now, fill out the form that fits with your needs and requirements. Start to chip through the work, using a copy to fill it all in first before doing your “final” version to make sure you correct all mistakes and issues. All you need to do is include the right information on the form as asked for, and you should be good to go most of the time.
- Make sure that you are aware of the deadlines, too. each form has its own deadline – usually April 15th for a Schedule C. missing deadlines can be brutal for your tax credibility and will likely hamper future relations with tax authorities.
If you are still unsure of what you should be doing, then you would be best served by hiring a tax professional. A trusted tax pro could sit down and go through all of your problems with you. They could spot the issues you have missed and make sure that any logical gaps or missing details can be found.
Taxation is a vital part of running a business, and one part which you should not take for granted. Take care of this accordingly, and your business is much stronger.
Meet with out CPA today!