Your business runs on labor, and paying crews as contractors looks cheaper on paper. You skip payroll taxes, workers' comp and withholding, and you file a 1099-NEC in January. The trouble is that the form doesn't decide whether someone is a contractor. How the work actually gets done decides it, and in many cleaning companies that looks like employment. If you pick the accounts, set the schedule, hand over the checklist and supply the chemicals, and the cleaner works only for you, an IRS,...
about 24 hours ago • 5 min read
If you do both maintenance and installs, the tax law sees two businesses. Mowing, cleanups and seasonal service contracts are service income. A patio, retaining wall, outdoor kitchen or drainage system you start in the fall and finish in the spring is a construction contract, and construction contracts have their own timing rules. Many landscapers don't use them. They report the deposit when it hits the bank, deduct the stone and labor when they pay for them, and let the job's profit land in...
4 days ago • 4 min read
If you still run perchloroethylene ("perc"), you already know it's being phased out. What the phaseout does to your taxes is less obvious. Replacing the machine, retiring the old one and cleaning up the site are three separate tax decisions. Each one has a right year and a right category, and if you lump them together as a cost of doing business, you can end up deducting too little, too late, or in a way that won't hold up. The deadline EPA's 2024 rule (40 CFR §751.605) sets three dates: -...
5 days ago • 4 min read
Walk your floor, then pull your depreciation schedule. Many laundromat owners find machines on the schedule that went to the scrapyard years ago. Each of those ghost assets is a deduction you never took, and the trade-in you made last spring may have created taxable income you haven't planned for. Year-end is when you can still fix both. What the rules allow Expensing new machines. For 2026, §179 lets you expense up to $2,560,000 of equipment. That limit starts to phase out once your...
6 days ago • 2 min read
You get paid before you work. A couple signs in October, wires a deposit in November, and the wedding is next June. In that gap between the money arriving and the work getting done, you can overpay tax, misstate your books, or both. The fix is mostly contract wording and bookkeeping, and it costs little to fix before December 31st. Deposits are taxed when the money lands Many small planning firms use the cash method. On cash, you're taxed on income when you receive it. A deposit for a 2027...
7 days ago • 4 min read
Every bakery ends the day with product it won't sell tomorrow. Most owners throw it out, mark it down, or hand it to a food bank without tracking it. The tax code treats those three choices differently. Donating without records usually leaves a deduction unclaimed. Claiming a large deduction without records or a cost adjustment is how a small giveaway turns into an audit adjustment. The rule: food donations get an enhanced deduction Under §170(e)(3)(C), any business can take an enhanced...
8 days ago • 3 min read
kupicoo/Getty Images Most coffee shops now take tips two ways: a prompt on the card reader and a jar by the register. Card tips usually end up in payroll because the processor keeps a record of them. The jar usually doesn't. The cash gets split at the end of the week and handed out, and nobody reports it. That setup costs you twice. You pay 7.65% employer Social Security and Medicare tax on card tips without claiming the credit that gives it back. And the unreported cash leaves tax the IRS...
12 days ago • 4 min read
A collector buys a $40,000 painting in December. The money lands in your operating account, your bookkeeper posts it to sales, and the artist gets a $20,000 check in January. Your books show a $40,000 month, but you earned $20,000. The other half belonged to the artist from the moment the buyer paid. Booking the full price as your income overstates your profit and throws off every margin you use to price and plan. It can also cost you tax a year early. In New York, it can put you on the wrong...
14 days ago • 4 min read
You probably pay your agents on 1099s and never think about it again. Usually that's right. Licensed real estate agents get a special rule most industries don't have. But that rule only protects you if three conditions hold, and one of them is a single sentence in a signed contract. Miss it, and you're back to the control test the IRS uses for salons and cleaning crews, the test a brokerage can lose if it sets office hours, assigns floor time, and requires its own forms and scripts. The three...
15 days ago • 3 min read