How to Payroll Series: Is Accountant Needed?
If your business owes IRS payroll tax, you must take some action to protect your business. You will receive notices that threaten IRS collection enforcement. Some common threats include:
- Final Notice of Intent to Levy
- Notice to Seize Assets
- Notice of Federal Tax Lien
- Notice of Balance Due
- Notice of Determination of Personal Responsibility Penalty
These are not empty threats. All of these are IRS collection notices. The only way to avoid further problems is to fix the past and make corrections for the future. In other words, to fix this problem, you have to do things differently.
In a related article, I suggested that you hire a payroll service to process your regular payrolls. But here is another thing you should definitely do, even after you hire a payroll service to handle your payroll. Hire an accounting professional to handle your monthly accounting.
Preparing accurate, monthly accounting is a great way to use a Certified Public Accountant.
- The accounting will make your annual tax return more organized and more accurate.
- The accounting will make preparing your tax return less expensive. (I promise!)
- Your payroll resolution attorney will need current tax returns or profit-loss information, which the accountant will quickly produce.
Here is another tip: Don’t try to do the accounting yourself. You are busy and are probably not trained to prepare this information anyway. In most cases, DIY accounting will be incorrect and quickly cause frustration.
Bonus Tip: The payroll professional and accountant can make this the same person or company if the services are available.