An accountant’s support is one of the best services you can pay for as a business owner. Managing your money professionally is important. Unfortunately, many business owners do not hire accountants and try to manage their finances themselves. It’s easy to make mistakes when you are responsible for handling your business’s money yourself but do not have any experience in professional finance. This post plans to tell you about why you need to hire an accountant instead of trying to do all of the heavy lifting yourself. Keep reading to find out more:
Handling Your Taxes
An accountant will be able to handle your taxes for you. Trying to manage your taxes yourself can be a big mistake, especially if you run a large business. Your taxes need to be calculated precisely. Even a minor mistake on a tax on capital gains or any other kind of tax can lead to huge penalties being levied against your business. As well as huge fines, intentionally evading tax is a criminal offense, rightly called tax evasion, and can lead to arrest and imprisonment. Those guilty of tax evasion can be sentenced to vast periods of time behind bars. An accountant will be able to prevent you from ever having to worry about being accused of tax evasion, intentionally or unintentionally.
The good thing about an accountant is that they will be able to devote all of their time to managing your business’s taxes for you. As a business owner, it’s going to be impossible for you to do this. You will have other more important things to worry about. Of course, a lot more goes into accountancy than just handling taxes, however. There is much more an accountant will be able to do for you, though when the tax year ends, their main focus will be organizing all of your files, compiling them, and calculating possible exemptions. Accountants are trained to minimize people’s tax bills by as much as possible.
Financial Management
An accountant will be able to manage your business’s daily finances for you, identifying issues and even suggesting alternative forms of money management. An accountant’s job goes a lot deeper than just filing taxes, as mentioned in the previous section. The accountant you hire needs to be an experienced one, though. You need an experienced accountant otherwise you are not going to be able to benefit from their support. A good way to ensure an accountant is experienced is to read their reviews prior to agreeing to work with them. An accountant’s reviews will tell you everything you need to know about them and help you decide whether or not they are right for you.
Once you have hired an accountant, you can ask them to go through your company’s ‘books’ (or financial records). Getting them to go through your records can help you to figure out whether or not you are owed money. Sometimes people overpay on their taxes. If you have overpaid on yours, you should theoretically be entitled to a refund. An accountant will not only be able to identify whether or not a refund is due, but they will also be able to apply for it for you, ensuring you get the money that is owed to you as quickly as possible.
Identifying Fraud
When they are going through your company’s records, your accountant will be able to search for any fraud that employees may or may not have committed in the past. It’s unfortunately not uncommon for employees to try and pull the proverbial wool over their employers’ eyes in order for them to get paid more than they perhaps deserve. If fraud is identified, your accountant will then be able to forward the contact information of a business lawyer to you, so you can start official claim proceedings.
Something to note is that if you have committed fraud in the past, your accountant will almost certainly report you. You therefore need to make sure that you are as above board as you can possibly be. Fraud does not always have to be intentional. Sometimes mistakes are made and are still considered fraud. Make sure that in the daily management of your business money, you are completely honest, and do not try to hide any or underdeclare. Intentional or unintentional business fraud can get you into a lot of trouble with both the tax authorities and the police. You are less likely to be convicted of a crime if it was an accident, though ignorance is not a defense.
Running a business can be difficult. Managing a business’s money whilst simultaneously running it can be even more so. An accountant is the best way to ensure no mistakes are made with your business’s finances. Make sure that you hire one with good reviews and a solid reputation.