Tax Planning Services In Fairfax County, Virginia
We Help Northern Virginia Business Owners Lower Their Taxes
Overpaying Your Taxes?
Many small businesses overpay their taxes because they do not have a proactive CPA making them aware of tax strategies they could implement. Without active professional guidance and support, small business owners do not take advantage of all the tax incentives available to them. This problem compounds, year after year.
Our three-step tax planning process solves this problem. We carefully analyze a person’s financial situation and apply strategies to help them pay the lowest amount of taxes based on their unique facts and circumstances.
Our objective is to save you more in taxes than our overall fees through identifying ideas and strategies which may save you money in taxes. We perform year-round tax planning and coordination at the business level and at the individual level throughout the year–NOT after year-end when it’s too late to make much difference.
Our Three-Step Tax Planning Process
For most business owners, taxes are the largest expense they have. Are you managing this expense proactively or reactively? When was the last time your tax pro came to you and said “here’s an idea I think will save you some money?”
Step One – Discovery
We analyze your current facts, review prior year tax returns, and look for mistakes and missed opportunities.
Step Two – Tax Plan
We make recommendations and prepare a formal tax plan identifying strategies to save you money.
Step Three – Implement
You can implement the tax plan yourself, with your current tax preparer, or with our assistance.
Step One – Discovery
In a typical tax planning engagement, during the initial discovery process, we meet with you via Zoom to understand where you’ve been and where you want to go. We generally focus on four key areas–business, real estate, investments, and personal. We take the time to analyze your current facts and circumstances to customize a plan that’s right for you. This also involves reviewing your current year records and prior year tax returns for mistakes and missed opportunities. In addition to meeting with you and reviewing your financial documents, we may use questionnaires to augment the discovery process.
Step Two – Prepare Tax Plan
After we perform a review of your current tax position, we make recommendations for how much we estimate you can save with proactive tax planning strategies. In this phase, we prepare a formal tax plan to identify strategies to save you money. This may involve “what-if” scenario planning to decide best options and in-depth tax projections to avoid surprises. Once we complete the tax plan, we will meet with you via Zoom to present you with 1 – 15+ strategies, depending on the circumstances. We will give you guidance to implement the strategies and minimize your tax liabilities.
Step Three – Implementation
Once you have your customized tax plan, you can choose to implement it yourself, with your current tax preparer, or with our ongoing assistance. After we prepare a tax plan, many clients choose to enlist our ongoing help with tax strategy implementation, especially with complex implementations. After implementing changes, we can help you estimate taxes owed each quarter to make proper quarterly estimated tax payments. Finally, we are also available to prepare your business and individual tax returns to ensure the savings are properly reported and actually realized in the tax returns.
Business Formations
Start-ups, entity selection, entity optimization, C corporations, S corporations, LLCs and partnerships, sole proprietors.
Maximize Deductions
Are you sure you are maximizing all tax deductions and all tax credits in all areas – business, real estate, investments, and personal?
Maximize Retirement
Have you compared a SEP IRA, Simple IRA, Traditional 401k, Roth 401k, solo 401k, defined benefit, profit sharing, traditional IRA, and Roth IRA?
New Tax Laws
Are you staying on top of new legislation and tax law changes to explore how new developments could benefit your business?
Maximize Business Auto
Should you purchase or lease a car for your business? Are you better off selecting the actual expense method or the mileage method?
Maximize Depreciation
For your business equipment, are you leveraging the current rules for Section 179, bonus depreciation, tax elections, and cost segregation?
Optimize Insurance
Need business, errors and omissions, professional liability, malpractice, worker’s compensation, disability, term-life, or permanent life insurance?
Home Office, Travel, Meals
Are you making the most of home office, travel, meals, entertainment, business gift, charitable, and advertising expenses?
Compensation
Have you determined an appropriate reasonable salary for your C or S corporation? Have you considered hiring children or grandparents?
Real Estate Ownership
What is the impact of buying or selling your first, second, or third home? Have you optimized mortgage and home equity interest? Gain exclusion.
Real Estate Investment
Depreciation real estate for maximum savings. Optimize repairs versus improvements. Correctly track, utilize, and optimize passive losses.
Real Estate Professional
Can you deduct rental real estate losses from other nonpassive income? Do you meet the criteria for real estate professional status for tax purposes?
Stocks, Bonds, Investment
Tax loss harvesting. Asset location. Tax-efficient investing. Tax deferral. Tax-smart cash, bond, and stock choices. Tax-free interest.
Education & Children
Tax stragies for college savings, college students, and college financial aid. Education tax incentives. Child tax credits and child care credits.
Family, Home, & Job
Health insurance deduction. Employee benefit optimization. Tax filing status optimization. Determining tax impact of marriage and divorce.