Las Vegas Accountant - Tax Services

As a Las Vegas accountant, one of the things that I get asked a lot is, "What should you ask an accountant in Las Vegas if you are considering hiring one?". One of the most important things is there licensing (their credentials, exactly what they have other licenses in). You should contact their state board of CPAs and the American Institute of accountants to see whether or not there has been any disciplinary actions put against them, and also check out their licenses - they usually do have them posted in their offices.

One of the other things that you should ask a Las Vegas accountant about is their fees: how do they charge you, is it an hourly billing, is it a value billing, what exactly will they charge you for phone calls, what type of meetings can you have with them on a regular basis? You want to make sure that you understand that before you hire an accountant. Additionally, you want to ask them how you could reduce your fees. Do you charge me less or more if I bring in a box of receipts? Could I possibly do some of the work and keep my fees at a minimum? One of the last things that I would consider asking them is 'what their strategies are with their financial statements and their tax returns?'. Are they aggressive, or are they conservative? You want to hire someone who is exactly like yourself. If you're aggressive and you like to take an aggressive strategy on your tax return, you want to make sure that an accountant is willing to look at that without disobeying the laws.

I want to take a minute to talk about Las Vegas accounting services that you receive from your CPA. Las Vegas CPAs often provide what we call "compliance services" such as: financial statements that are required for banks or other lending institutions, or tax returns which, of course, our government requires. But the accounting services that really mean the most to clients are those that aren't required, but that really add value to you and your life. Those services we call "value-added services".

And so when you're looking for a CPA and trying to decide how you're going to employ someone to do those things that have to be done (those compliance services) also find out from them if they have an interest in, or a history of, providing these "value-added services". These accounting services include: helping you plan for retirement, helping you look for ways out of your business, exit strategies, succession planning, those kinds of things, as well as how to take the money that you make in your business, in your life and retain it so that you can live the life that you like through your retirement years.

The important thing is to make sure that your accountant is offering you the services that are most important to you life. Keep this in mind the next time you meet with your CPA to discuss possible Las Vegas accounting services.

Quite often, while doing tax preparation in Las Vegas, I get asked the question by small business owners, "How can I reduce my taxes?". Almost always, the most important thing that they forget is that they don't keep their receipts so that they can deduct all the expenses that they pay. It's important, for tax preparation, that the Las Vegas business owner keeps track, even if you just take an envelope and put the receipts that you paid for (whether cash, or by credit card) in that envelope every single day, and at the end of the year, or at the end of the month you just add those up and put those on the expense sheet - that's a huge way you can save, and quite often, small business owners will just throw away the receipts (or they can't find them when it comes time to do their tax return)

Some of the most common areas where people forget their expenses are in the materials or the supplies that they might pay for. If they're a contractor for instance - they may run to a local hardware store and pick up some small supplies they need for a job, but they forget to keep the receipt, or forget to put it in that box or envelope at the end of the day. As well, there are office expenses, or meal and entertainment expenses. If they take employees out to lunch, or pay for a dinner with current clients or customers, and then they forget that, "Oh, that was something that I need to go ahead and deduct on my tax return".

Therefore, if you want to save on taxes, one of the key tax preparation methods in Las Vegas is to keep track of the expenses that you pay.