For owners who work in Austin
Tax Advisor Austin questions owners actually ask
Plain answers about an open month, payday, the return, and a letter that asks for a signature.
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Answers we give before a call.
The same few questions come up, and they deserve a straight answer before anyone books a time. Scholz Garten has poured beer on San Jacinto since 1866. A garden pouring beer since 1866 is a feeling Texans recognize. The questions below are younger, and they are the ones that decide whether the month can still move.
Can the month still be open.
If the bank and the books still tell two stories, the close comes first. We will not talk about next year while this month still disagrees with the bank.
Who runs payday.
Payday starts when a provider account exists under the business, and that opening is the piece we handle. You run payday after that. Later pay dates stay on your calendar, the same way any other bill you already know how to send stays on your calendar.
Who prepares the return.
Once the months match the bank, the same team can prepare the return from those months instead of handing the year to a stranger in March. Who prepares the return is settled on a later call, after the months already match.
When the letter wants an opinion.
A letter that wants a signed opinion is answered on the first call by naming the firm that can sign it, which is not this practice. Statements from a closed month are a different thing, and those we can prepare.
What if April surprised you.
A large balance due, sometimes with a penalty beside it, usually means the estimates were never set during the year. We look at last year's tax and this year's pace. Last year's tax and this year's pace are the two numbers we use, and a made up refund is not one of them.
What we will not guess.
We will not guess a sales tax total from a bank deposit that has not been split. We will not guess that every deposit is income. A transfer from the owner, a loan draw, and a refund from a vendor all land in the same feed, and they are not the same kind of money.
If the feed is a mess, the first month is the cleanup. The advice waits until that month has a shape.
Three more questions that decide the year.
Should owner pay change before December.
Sometimes yes, and only while the year is still open. A change in what the owner takes, a retirement amount, or the timing of a large purchase can still move the year if the date for that choice has not passed. A dollar result does not belong on this page. We will say whether your facts still have a date on them, once the months are in front of us.
Does a quiet sales tax month still get filed.
Often yes. A month with no taxable sales can still have a return due on the twentieth. We would rather file a quiet month on time than rebuild it from a bank feed the night before. The city row and the transit row are coded when the sale is recorded, not reconstructed later from a deposit that mixed three kinds of money.
What if the entity was never chosen on purpose.
A sole owner who has been profitable for a while sometimes still has an election window, and sometimes that window closed last spring. We say which one it is. We do not invent an election whose date has passed, and we do not push a change that would only look clever on a slide. The books have to be current before that conversation is worth having. Bring last year's return if you have it, and the months since. The answer gets sharper when those two can be read together, and it stays blunt when they cannot. If you are not sure which question is yours, put it in the words you would use on a call. We will name the job under the sentence before we name a next step. The pages on dates, the open week, and a week that already closed are there when the question is really about a calendar.
Bring the question.
Say the worry in one or two plain lines, the same way you would tell a friend what the letter is about.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice. The practice is in Dallas.