Accounting News and Notes

By planning ahead you can avoid having unnecessary tax fines and penalties from being assessed. Being sure to pay your taxes as you go will enable you to properly budget your living expenses while also being sure to legally maintain the tax and legal responsibilities of your business. If you show up at year end hoping for your tax professional to work a miracle you are expecting the impossible. However, if you show up at your CPA’s door well before the year is over and before the tax clock has wound down, you CPA can help you not only plan but help ensure that you have legally claimed all of your tax deductions. During these meetings you can also set up and fund, if you do it early enough, retirement plans for you and your employees so as to maximize your retirement benefits in the future and your tax deductions today. Planning and not compliance are one of the best investments you will make in your financial future.

Showing up at your CPA’ s office after the year is over to prepare your year end taxes will result in surprises which only you can avoid. Although a professional adviser can greatly assist in year end tax planning issues, a CPA is greatly limited in what they can do after the year is over. By reviewing your tax elections, status, looking for missed deductions, and year end financial and tax planning issues a CPA can assist you in not only planning for your year end liability but in its reductions as well.Being sure that you have properly funded your retirement plan, turned in expense reports for business items you paid personally, and carefully evaluating your business operations are all critical components of ensuring that your year end payments are in order. As the IRS as well as states will penalize you for late payment it is judicious to spend time planning on what your year end liability will be as well as taking appropriate steps prior to year end.

The DOW continues to reach record highs so what is an investor to do. Whether one is in a bull or a bear market investors should consistently evaluate the market with the same methodologies not letting emotion dictate what common sense would otherwise tell you. Keeping a keen eye on the goal is a critical component of investing while staying abreast of varying options available is no less an invaluable tenant when the market is growing or shrinking. The stock market is not for the faint of heart and is best served by both patience and a wise and supportive financial adviser to help guide you through the many options and variables involved. Keeping both fear and exuberance out of the investment decision will assist you to look as normal rises in the market with less trepidation and more prudence as you seek you way investment wise. Our normal reactions are to buy when the market is rising thus necessitating we buy at the higher prices in the market while our fear guarantees us a loss as we panic and sell at the lowest possible moment. Regardless of the markets condition and direction we are best served by looking at sound options and comparing them to what we are presently invested in to ensure that we are not investment hopping throwing ourselves in perhaps a poorer investment by making a rash decision.