Accounting & Bookkeeping
A clean close makes the return straightforward. Building a return from unreconciled books is where most preparation cost and most risk actually sits.
Explore
Service 02: Tax
Tax planning & compliance
Federal and New York filings run from a managed calendar, with the planning conversation happening in Q3 while the year can still be changed, rather than in March, when all that is left is data entry and regret.
At a glance
- Planning window: Q3 projection, August to November
- Jurisdictions: Federal, New York State, multi-state
- Entities: S corp, C corp, partnership, LLC, sole prop
- Fee: fixed, agreed before the season starts
- Notices: reviewed and answered, included
Fit
Who this is for
- Your tax bill surprises you every year. No projection, no planning window, and an extension filed because the numbers were not ready.
- You are getting notices. IRS or New York State correspondence arriving more than once a year is a process signal, not bad luck.
- You have crossed state lines. Remote employees, out-of-state customers or third-party warehousing have quietly created filing obligations.
- Your entity structure is inherited. You are an LLC or an S corp because of a decision made years ago at a different scale.
- You are planning a transaction. A sale, a buyout or a new owner needs modeling well before it happens, not after.
Outcomes
What a managed tax function feels like
The measure of a good tax relationship is not the size of the refund. It is that nothing arrives as a surprise.
You know the number in October
A Q3 projection built from nine months of actuals tells you the likely liability while there is still a quarter left to act on it.
Nothing is filed late
Every federal, state and local obligation sits on a shared calendar with a lead time and an owner. Extensions become a choice, not a rescue.
Notices get answered, not paid
A meaningful share of notices are wrong. We check the assessment against the filed return and the account transcript before anyone reaches for a check.
Scope
What's included
Compliance and planning are sold together deliberately. Compliance without planning is expensive typing; planning without compliance is advice nobody executes.
01
Business tax returns
Federal and New York State returns for S corporations (1120-S), C corporations (1120), partnerships and multi-member LLCs (1065), and single-member LLCs and sole proprietorships, including all schedules, K-1 preparation and distribution.
02
Owner & individual returns
Personal returns for owners and key stakeholders, coordinated with the entity return so pass-through income, basis, distributions, retirement contributions and state credits are planned as one position rather than two.
03
Quarterly estimates & projections
Estimates calculated from current-year actuals rather than last year's safe harbor, revised quarterly as results move. A Q3 projection every year with a written summary of the options still available before 31 December.
04
Multi-state & nexus review
An annual review of where revenue, payroll, property and remote employees create income tax or sales tax nexus, with a written register of filing obligations by state and a remediation path where an obligation has been missed.
05
Entity structuring analysis
Modeling of entity options (S election, C corporation, partnership, holding structure) against your actual projected numbers over a three-year horizon, including New York State and New York City treatment, which frequently changes the answer.
06
Sales & use tax
Registration, taxability review by product and service line, return preparation and filing, exemption certificate management, and voluntary disclosure where historic exposure exists in a state you should have been registered in.
07
Notice & examination support
Every IRS and New York State notice reviewed against the filed return and account transcript, answered in writing, and tracked to closure. Representation through examination, including document preparation and correspondence.
08
Managed filing calendar
A shared calendar covering federal, New York State, local, sales tax, payroll tax, information returns and annual report obligations: each with an owner, a lead time and a status. Visible to you, not just to us.
What this does not include
Tax Court litigation and formal appeals representation (we will coordinate with tax counsel), international tax structuring and transfer pricing, and estate or trust planning, for which we will refer you to specialists rather than pretend the capability exists in-house.
Annual cycle
What happens when
The tax year is a twelve-month process with four pressure points, not a single event in March. This is the cadence we run.
| Period | What we do | What you decide |
|---|---|---|
| Jan – Apr | Prepare and file entity and individual returns; issue K-1s; calculate Q1 estimates; reconcile prior-year provision to the filed return. | Sign and file. Fund any balance due and the Q1 estimate. |
| May – Jul | Post-season debrief on what was avoidable; nexus footprint review; sales tax and information return compliance; entity structure check-in. | Whether to change entity, registration or process before the next cycle. |
| Aug – Nov | The planning window. Full-year projection from nine months of actuals; written memo of every lever still available before year end. | Capital purchases, timing, compensation, retirement funding, elections. |
| Dec | Execute the agreed year-end actions; confirm they are recorded correctly; finalize Q4 estimate; brief you on the expected filing position. | Final year-end transactions and distributions. |
Engagement
How the engagement runs
We prefer to start in the second or third quarter rather than in February. It gives us a full planning window before the first filing season we own.
Stage 01
Assess
Review of the last three years of returns, notice history, entity structure and current registrations, producing a written memo of exposures and missed positions.
Stage 02
Design
We build the filing calendar, confirm the entity and registration position, agree on the estimate methodology, and set the planning-window dates for the year.
Stage 03
Execute
Returns prepared and filed, estimates issued, notices cleared, and any historic exposure remediated through voluntary disclosure where that is the right route.
Stage 04
Monitor
The annual cycle above, run every year, with the Q3 projection and written planning memo as the fixed center of the relationship.
Sectors
Where the rules bite hardest
Sector determines which tax questions actually matter: job-site nexus for contractors, exemption certificates for manufacturers, UBIT for nonprofits, economic nexus for anyone selling remotely.
Questions
Tax planning & compliance FAQ
Between August and November, while the year can still be changed. By the time a return is being prepared in March, the transactions are history and the only levers left are retirement contributions and a small number of elections.
We run a projection in Q3 from nine months of actuals plus a forecast, so decisions about capital purchases, owner compensation, entity elections and timing get made while they can still affect the outcome. A conversation in April is a post-mortem, not planning.
Quite possibly. Most states assert economic nexus once you cross a revenue or transaction threshold there, and many also assert it from a single remote employee, inventory held in a third-party warehouse, or repeated in-person service delivery.
Thresholds and triggers differ by state and by tax type. Income tax nexus and sales tax nexus are separate tests with separate rules. A nexus review compares your revenue, payroll and property footprint against each state's rules and identifies where an unfiled obligation already exists. Where it does, voluntary disclosure is usually far cheaper than being found.
Send it to your CPA the day it arrives. Do not ignore it, and do not pay it reflexively. Both are expensive.
Most notices carry a 30-day response window, and the options narrow sharply once it passes. A meaningful share of notices are wrong or partially wrong: a misapplied payment, a return processed against the wrong period, a mismatch caused by a late-filed information return. We check the notice against the filed return and the account transcript before agreeing with any of it.
It depends on profit level, owner compensation, state treatment and exit plans, not on a rule of thumb you read somewhere.
An S election can reduce self-employment tax on distributions above a reasonable salary. It also imposes payroll obligations, restricts who can own the business, complicates multi-state filing, and is treated differently by New York City. We model the options against your actual projected numbers over three years before recommending a change, because the break-even is genuinely specific to your facts.
Yes, and for owner-operated businesses it is usually the right approach.
Pass-through income, owner compensation, distributions, basis, retirement contributions and state credits all interact across the two returns. Planning either in isolation reliably produces a worse combined outcome. Both sit under a single fixed fee agreed in advance.
Related services
Often engaged together
Outsourced CFO & Advisory
Tax planning needs a forecast to plan against. The Q3 projection is far sharper when a real financial model sits underneath it.
Explore
Regulatory Compliance & Internal Controls
The filing calendar is one part of a wider compliance calendar. Most businesses have obligations beyond tax that nobody currently owns.
Explore
Next step
Start before the season, not during it
Send us your last two returns and your current-year numbers. We will tell you what a Q3 projection would likely show and whether there is anything worth acting on this year.