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Simple Step | Talk to Your Accountant
330 Plays3 years ago
In this week’s Simple Step podcast, we talk about the importance of meeting with your accountant and giving them some room to work. Plus we cover some key questions to ask and ways to be proactive in creating tax strategies that serve your situation best.
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Transcript
The Uncommon Life Concept
00:00:04
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Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there.
Tools for an Uncommon Life
00:00:22
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We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:29
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A life worth celebrating and savoring.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:32
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Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey.
Quick Tips for an Uncommon Life
00:00:38
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Hello, welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project. Thank you for the intro. That was awesome. We haven't thanked her for a while for the amazing intro she's done. Let's go. And this is a simple step. You're here. You're ready. You were ready for a quick thing that you can do to help you advance your own uncommon life journey. And these are only five minutes. The clock is ticking. What are we going to talk about?
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, I am Brian Dewhurst. I wanted to introduce myself. Oh, well, thanks for joining me. Yeah.
Year-End Accounting Tips for Entrepreneurs
00:01:09
Speaker
So today's topic is meet with your accountant. And before your end. Before your end. I would say quarter four is what we're really talking about. Yeah, trying to develop a cadence, I think it's going to be different for everybody. But we work with a lot of people across a lot of different states. And I think the way accountants are designed,
00:01:31
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You know, they view a lot of their work being done in Q1 April of the following year. And so our perspective is you have to establish a communication expectation with them.
00:01:45
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upfront and especially if you're a new entrepreneur or you're just starting your business and you haven't been through and you have a major shift to the way your taxes are going to be filed. Getting in front of that is so important versus like putting your head down, trying to build your business and then all deal with that in.
00:02:03
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Early April. Right. You are in for a world of pain. The genesis of this is we've seen a lot of people do just that. Yeah. Where they're now in March or April and like they're just now looking at it. Right. And there's no time now to do a lot. Right.
00:02:20
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And if you have a large after-tax investment account where you could have significant capital gains, this past year in 2021 was one of those years with the way the market was and the way bonds and interest rates moved.
Learning and Improving Financial Discussions
00:02:33
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I think it triggered a lot of capital gains for people and people weren't really ready to
00:02:38
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see what that number was and you get that statement from your securities firm in late January or even February now and you have literally 30 days or so or 45 days to file your taxes and it's a huge surprise.
00:02:53
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And so, you know, part of this even for us is like we're not saying we're perfect. We're not saying, you know, we've done this to the level for our clients that we even want. But this is something we're focusing on for us and our business and for our clients of leading this discussion more in 2022 and beyond.
Optimizing Taxes with Accountants
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Yep. So meet with your CPA or accountant and what questions are they going to be asking them?
00:03:20
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I think it's a matter of saying, hey, this is how much income I've had. These are my income sources or these are the changes that I have. Where am I at? Let's do an estimate. What am I missing? What are other deductions that I could be achieving?
00:03:37
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You know, I think a lot of times too, accounts and CPAs are just using, it's like a reactive, oh, hey, these are the numbers, this is what's been presented to me, this is what you owe, as opposed to like, hey, if you did this, this, this, and that, you would actually save a lot more in tax. We just don't see a lot of that happening. And so I think really prompting your accountant or CPA of like, what are other people doing? Or what is the next, like, what am I missing?
00:04:04
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What else could we be doing?
Scheduling Accountant Communications
00:04:06
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Uh, yeah, we try to drive that conversation for a lot of our clients with their accountants too and nothing against any accountant or any person, but we're just trying to get our uncommon wealth listeners or I guess uncommon life project listeners a one up on how to maybe because like the noisy gong gets all the attention. Let's just say so if you go to your
00:04:26
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Accountant proactively and it isn't march 30th. Let's just say yeah, you're gonna get a lot more attention And he's gonna or she's gonna be very appreciative of that Okay. I don't know if we need to say anything else. Yeah set a communication schedule with your accountant and Time block the meetings and your calendar and make them happen prior to your end What a great simple step. All right, that's it. You've been listening uncommon life project. Thanks for listening. Thanks everybody.
Podcast Outro and Call to Action
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Bye. Bye
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That's all for this episode of the Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.