One of the most feared as well as least understood systems in a business is the system of bookkeeping or accounting. The reason for this could be that most people are apprehensive of the work involved in setting up such a system and the monotony of plugging in daily inputs to keep the system alive.
But if you look at it closely, there is nothing too complicated about bookkeeping. It is just like maintaining a personal diary or your check book. To put it simply, it is nothing more than keeping a tab on your income and expenditure on a daily basis.
The first step to get going is to open a business account for your new business enterprise. This is a simple procedure involving your requesting the new accounts teller at your local bank for a new business account and sent the new account registration fee to the relevant commissioner. You are ready with your new business account with freshly imprinted checks.
The next step is to pick up a note book with loose leaves and a supply of paper. It is also a good idea to use index tabs which separate the months or even to create separate accountings for all the items you sell.
What you do at the end of the month is to transfer this daily information to one of the cheap bookkeeping registers from where your tax consultant or accountant can work. These professionals usually do not work with your daily register but would rather take information from the official bookkeeping registers. They will not even transfer the information on your behalf. If you ask them to, then charge a hefty fee to do this. It is truly no big deal, and spending a few minutes on the last day of the month, you could transfer the details yourself. When you are preparing to pay your tax returns, simply hand over this bookkeeping register to whoever is compiling your tax liabilities and you are free.
The bookkeeping register need not be anything complicated, the simple “Economic Register, Form RL-17″ columnar note book which are commonly used can suffice your needs. Such registers are available in a variety of styles and sizes from Economic Systems-PO Box 11413-Tacoma, WA 98411. You essentially need a notebook with columns demarcated. Put a title on top of each column to represent the money transactions related to that product or services as specified by the column. At the end of the month simply add up whatever figures appear in the column and you will know in a moment how much money you made against each of the products or services that you are dong business with.
After the date column record the expenses or the money spent. Put a title on top of each column and insert the figures which are relevant to that head. At the end of the month, simply add up the figures and you will know your total monthly expenditure. When your expenses are more than your earnings, obviously you are running at a loss. The vice versa is true to know how much profits you have made in a month.
The two important points to remember is that bookkeeping or accounting can be kept simple and uncomplicated when all you do is to go on recording your business activities and keep the book updated.
By: Guy Starbuck
Posts Tagged ‘Tax Liabilities’
The Easy Way to Set Up a Bookkeeping System
February 2nd, 2010Tax Solutions Made Easy
January 8th, 2010
When you are faced with tax dues to the IRS and you are unable to pay them you are left with three main options: one is to pay the whole amount which in most cases is an impossibility because of bad financial state, second is to make the payments in installments and third is to make a partial payment and get the rest waived away. But in order to get help with tax related issues the ideal thing to do would be to seek professional help like USA Tax Help to sort out the situation. If you try to handle the matter by yourself you may land up in a further mess.
This is because a complete working knowledge of the IRS system is needed to make the right arrangements.
What can USA Tax Help do to help in tax obligation reduction? They do the following:
• A complete analysis: They gather details about your tax liabilities and all the past communications from the IRS. They get into an analysis of all your assets and liability statements; they also judge your cash flow every month. After getting an idea about what the future potential cash flow can be they go to the next step.
• Recommendation: Based on their financial analysis of your status they give you a list of options in the form of recommendations – you can choose the one that will most suit your situation.
• Represent you with IRS: They can be your Power of Attorney and provide you with IRS transcripts and the Statute of Limitations expiration date.
• CDP hearing: USA Tax Help is a tax help business that can arrange for a CDP hearing which entitles you to put forth your case to the authorities. Once this hearing has been arranged – till the time it happens all collection efforts from the IRS will be put on hold. During the hearing itself you would be arriving at an alternative solution to satisfy your tax obligations. You might settle for an Offer in Compromise or installment payments.
• Installment arrangement: In case you have the capability to pay a small amount every month then IRS provides you with this option albeit with a cap on the time you can take to do this. A professional firm will let you work out your cash flow projections to your advantage and thus get your monthly commitment reduced to a large degree.
• Offer in Compromise: This option opens up for you when you are not able to pay up your owed amount. In such a case IRS is ready to waive a certain portion of your arrears and would accept the rest of the payment in lieu of the overall settlement dues. This again needs your financial status to be put forth in a specific manner that will get you a maximum waiver.
With USA Tax help you are in safe hands because you get prompt service with the most efficient and effective service with an ultimate decrease in the amount you owe to the IRS.
By: David Locey