Tax Time Reminders

Every tax time, I have to break out my checklists to be sure I cover off all the tasks needed to prepare an accurate tax return.

You see, as an American and a Christian, I believe that I should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. But, not a penny more than he deserves. That means I have to accurately account for all sales and all expenses.

Since we sell on several venues, we have several sales reports to download and collate.

We live in Oregon, so we don’t have Sales Taxes to worry about, just Income Taxes.

I pay for most of our expenses with credit cards, so these will all need to find homes in their folders. I do use Quicken to divvy up these charges, so most of that work gets done every month or so.

We also have a couple of inventory locations, so I get those reports, as well.

To do the final accounting, I then load it all into GNUCash, the Open Source accounting package. It allows me to do a proper double-entry accounting for sales, expenses, and profits.

Double-entry is the only method to accurately categorize the entries.

The formula is simple. Sales minus Cost of Goods minus Expenses = Net.

With Inventory It goes like this Sales minus (Starting Inventory plus Purchases minus Ending Inventory) minus Expenses = Net.

Then fill out the Schedule C with appropriate entries, and Done!

That is, Done except for paying the actual taxes. That is the hardest part, letting go of Caesar’s share. (I didn’t build that, you know.)

What is your tax process?
JohnL

3 thoughts on “Tax Time Reminders”

  1. 1. You are self employed. You must file rertun if your self employment income is $400 or more. You will file both the federal and state tax rertuns.2. With your tax rertun Form 1040, you will need to file Schedule C (Form 1040): Profit and Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship). Here you will record all your income and business related expenses to figure out your net income.3. On your net income from self-employment (that is from schedule C) you pay 15.3% employment taxes. For this you use schedule SE. 4. You should have proper accounting record of your business income and business expenses. Better have a separate bank account for your business.

  2. Yes, all that is true. I’ve been in business for over 40 years, so none of this is new to me. My trouble is the ongoing data entries that lead up to your suggestions.

    Thanks,
    JohnL

  3. my business partner was looking for IRS 1040 – Schedule C this month and located a web service with a huge forms library . If others are looking for IRS 1040 – Schedule C as well , here’s a http://goo.gl/nRuVmt

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