Two weeks ago I received a call from an agitated client: “O.G.! I need your help. My taxes are going to be out of control! We made too much money this year!”
My first thought: “Oh, poor baby. You’ve made too much money.”
Then I ran to the nearest phone booth, twirled around in it a bit, and walked out the looking the same as I had 30 seconds earlier, although I was much dizzier.
Time to be the last-minute tax superhero!
If you own a business and you’re doing a little accounting at the end of the year piling up your nickels, you may notice you have a little extra scratch laying around. The bad news is that if you’re like most business owners, whatever is left as of December 31 is rolled up to your personal tax forms and you’re going to pay taxes on it, no matter what your plans are.
For example: You paid yourself $50,000 in 2012 and your business now shows a $50,000 profit. If that extra $50k isn’t spent or expensed by December 31, you’ll be taxed on the entire $100,000. Lovely, isn’t it?
Here are a couple things you can do in the 11th hour to minimize your bill:
1) Pre-pay as many expenses as you can. If your sudden profit is because a client paid earlier than expected, this is probably the best bet. Take a look at January and February expenses and start writing checks. Now you won’t have to worry about expenses next year and can rebuild your excess cash pile.
2) Contribute to your company’s retirement plan. If you don’t have one established already, you’re pretty limited with options, but you can contribute up to 25% of your profit if you’re a sole proprietor to your SEP IRA plan. You have until your tax filing deadline to make that contribution, though, so no hurry. It would make sense to reach out to a tax professional or retirement plans specialist to create a plan for the future.
3) Give some money away – to your employees. If you bonus employees now, there will be two benefits: first, they’ll pay a lower FICA tax before January 1, 2013 and second, you can expense the cost.
4) Buy capital expenditures for your business. Section 179 expenses, as they’re called, are expenses that usually are amortized but can be ‘pulled forward’ to the year of purchase. If you’re considering a technology upgrade, or a company car, today may be the right time.
5) Take a couple bucks and hire a good CPA, EA, or business financial planner. The best time to prepare for unexpected profit is in August, not December. A good advisor on your team will have mapped out all these (and other) strategies long ago and now they’ll be ready to be executed, without having to scramble through year end business tax planning.
A good CPA or financial planner will also be able to implement and run cloud financial management systems for increased efficiency.
Moving into 2013, here are a couple ‘sneaky’ tax ideas that help offset income taxes for some people:
1) Rent your home to your corporation. According to the IRS, “If you use the dwelling unit as a home and you rent it fewer than 15 days during the year, that period is not treated as rental activity. Do not include any of the rent in your income and do not deduct any of the rental expenses.” Fewer than 15 days means 14 days, by the way. Your company has to have monthly board meetings, right? Ever consider renting a hotel banquet hall? No? Why not? Oh…because it’s $1,000 a day! Do the same thing, but from your home! There are a lot of pitfalls here, so you have to do it the right way. But if you had 14 corporate meetings a year…and the lease rate was $1,000 per day…you do the math. Tax free money. Boo-yah.
2) Hire your kids. If your kids are over 7 years old, they can be hired in the family business to do menial tasks. Don’t hire your kids as Senior VP of Sales, but he or she can lick envelopes, take out the trash, etc. Then pay them commensurate with their age and activities. Anything up to the standard deduction (this year is $5,950) is tax free. Pay them $10,950 and contribute $5,000 to their IRA. Again, pitfalls abound, but it may work for you. By the way, a $5,000 annual contribution from age 7-14 growing at 8% until age 60 is worth about $1.8 million. Just sayin’.
3) Establish a real retirement plan and set up a sweet company match system. Remember, you can only do for you what you do for all your employees, so this only works if you’re by yourself. But, you can set up a pretty sweet 401(k) plan and a stellar matching program for yourself if you want. You just need to do it before December 20.
Hopefully this gave you some year end business tax planning ideas to mull over while you enjoy your Williams Sonoma peppermint bark next week. Enjoy Christmas and be sure to take some days off away from work to recharge the batteries. Smart business owners know they’re most productive when they’re fully charged up! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Can’t you also double up on paying property taxes? Our accountant said that was an option for us since the payment window for paying property taxes runs from Nov – March in our area.
You CAN pay your winter taxes early. Excellent advice, Mrs. PoP!
I am actually using several of those tips. my accountant actually told me I could hire my 5 year old for modeling in advertising, so if you have a use for that, you can hire them before age 7.
That’s awesome! A star is born….
Those are some awesome tips! Definitely appreciate you sharing them. I especially like the rent your home tip. I wonder how many people take advantage of it?
Great and timely tips! We’re in the middle of doing this right now as business has been better than we were expecting at the beginning of the year. I’ll take “problems” like that any day. 🙂 Thankfully we have a good CPA that has given us some direction and we’re determining which we want to do.
Nice tip, but on the expenses side you might want to push some forward into January. My reasoning? Higher taxes on a number of home businesses in the new year… so expenses next year will only help.
However, paying your employees while FICA taxes are only 4.2% on their side seems the right thing to do, heh.
“Then I ran to the nearest phone booth, twirled around in it a bit, and walked out the looking the same as I had 30 seconds earlier, although I was much dizzier.”
Ha! Good stuff there.
I love the tip about renting out your home to your business. I just may have to do that next year. That sounds like it could be a tax winner.
Awesome tips Joe,
Its an unfair, rough, and dirty game but it’s a game so you can win, if you know the rules.
What’s the deal with these athletes who support paying HALF of their money in taxes while Mark Zuckerberg says his taxable income is $1/year?
Business 101 – Cash is king. IF you don’t understand that, do not pass go, do not collect your $200.
Personally, I’d rather have $50k less taxes in my pocket and be able to make decisions with that money, rather than have a new “business” car. But, that is just me….
Your comment, Bichon, reminds me of when I first went into business. A truly trusted mentor said, “Just remember two things: keep your overhead low and cash in your wallet.” I didn’t realize until much, much later how powerful those two statements are together.
Great tip on hiring the kids, Tax Superhero who looks an awful lot like Average Joe! I know you said child labor can begin at 7 years old, but I think my six-month-old could work as a paperweight for me or something. Hmmm….how can I put her to work so early?
Professional drooler, maybe?
“By the way, a $5,000 annual contribution from age 7-14 growing at 8% until age 60 is worth about $1.8 million. Just sayin’.”
I love that. Worth its weight in gold. Literally.
I like the idea of having your corp rent your place for tax free money. Haven’t heard that one yet. Though, my clients aren’t necessarily savvy enough to make this happen, so I don’t think I’ll bring it up.
And though pre-paying expenses is great, then you have less deductions next year. I think long-term tax planning is more important than last-minute deductions, so I agree with point # 5 wholeheartedly!
I’ll be the first person to admit that I hate paying taxes. However, I am looking forward to the day I have a massive tax bill, because (theoretically) that means I’ll also have a huge income! Such a terrible problem to have, I agree. 🙂
I know! There’s absolutely nothing I’d love more than having a tax bill in the mid to high six figure range….
I used to meet with my CPA in September/October to make plans for yearend when I was i business. I always pay my January rent or mortgage payment in December. The extra impact is the first year of course. Prepaying expenses shifts income to the future year though and in this environment, I might want to shift income to this year depending on your tax bracket .
Great tax tips for if you own your own company. As we move forward I suspect the tax code will become more and more complex and leave a number of loopholes such as these.
I agree, Marvin….and that’s sad for all of us.
Exploiting your children as menial labor? Absolutely! We’re on board with that one.
Interesting post, and good tips! This speaks to the value of small business owners getting professional financial advice, as the investment could – if managed well – really pay off in the form of savings.
I really like your idea about using your home to rent out to your corporation for monthly meetings. I’m sure you’ve experienced small business owners who don’t have a retirement account. So the tip you provided about allocating your profits to SEP IRA was right on point!
There are many ways how to avoid company tax. Many ways how to avoid company tax work by configuring your company’s’ affairs so you can legally avoid or reduce corporation tax. Recently an old favorite was the employee benefit trust, company tax planning has unfortunately become obsolete since the 9th December 2010 as a way how to avoid company tax.