Las Vegas Cpa - Business Planning Services

I'm a Las Vegas CPA who just came out of a meeting with a bunch of students. They were down at a recruiting visit down in Southern Utah. And one of the things we told them when they're looking for an employer is to "find your fit". And that is an absolutely important tip I can give to any business owner as well: When you're looking for an advisor - your attorney, your insurance agent, your Las Vegas CPA - these are people you're going to have to trust an awful lot with the personal details of your life and with the success of your business in some case, and so you need to take the time to interview people and see whether you relate to them, and whether it's somebody that you can trust, someone you can get on the phone and talk to, and someone who shares your values.

Maybe they have a similar appetite for risk. You may not be as cutting edge as your CPA wants to be on taxes, and that may make you uncomfortable. Or, your CPA may be more conservative than you want to be. So it's very important that you spend the time on this relationship at the front, because it's much easier to spend it then, than to change CPAs every 2 or 3 years. So, "find your fit" when choosing a Las Vegas CPA.

One of the things my Las Vegas clients ask me often is, "How can you help me more with my tax planning?", and I think the best answer to that is "I need to talk to you". Whoever your Las Vegas CPA is, if you let them know what you're doing before March of the next year, they can often do a lot of things with entity structure, or just planning the deal to make it more tax efficient. Communication is the key with Las Vegas tax planning, but if you only talk to your CPA once a year, in March, you're missing the boat, and he or she isn't able to help you as much as they could.

For example: I had a client come to me once that was doing a land deal; they owned some land and they were going to build a building on it. And by talking with us, and letting us understand their particular tax situation, we were able to structure another entity, take the advantages between a partnership and a corporation, and capture most of that gain as long-term capital gain, instead of all as ordinary income. But it's one of those things that we couldn't have done if they had started construction and talked to us after the fact.

Make sure that your CPA understands your business and tax situation as early as possible. Give them any information that they might be able to use during the tax planning process, and make sure your Las Vegas accountant really gets to know your and your business.

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.