We get 2-3 emails a week from people that we never interacted with in the past with questions like: “I need a new accountant, how much are your services?” or “How much will you charge me to do my taxes this year”?
Now, I got to tell you, it is really hard to answer just like that… BUT we do a lot of accounting and tax work here in our office, so we can give this answer to start:
- Personal tax returns start at $375
- Corporate Tax Returns (under $250k in Sales or Assets, no balance sheet) start at $525. With sales/assets between $675k and $1mm, start at $600. And with sales/assets over $1mm, start at $975. We would need custom price corporations with more than $10mm in revenues.
- Bookkeeping/Accounting work to prepare financial statements “tax return ready” starting at $600
Now we say “start” to qualify the prices above, because there are items that may cause the cost to vary:
- Complexity in personal returns, such as multiple sources of income, foreign income, foreign assets, investments/trading activity, rental income and expense scheduled, self-employed business income and expense schedules, itemized deductions, number of dependents, carry-over losses, applying for special tax credits, lack of estimated payments, etc…
- Complexity in corporate returns such as multiple partners/owners with special capital & distribution structures, foreign partners, fixed assets and amortizable assets that need to be listed, adjustments to income/expenses due to personal nature of claimed business expenses, conversions from LLC to C corporation or conversions to S corporations, carryover losses, preparing a state tax return, etc…
- Complexity in the accounting/bookkeeping work in order to prepare “tax return ready” financial statements vary based on things like: current state of your accounting system (QuickBooks File), number of transactions, number of hand-written checks, number of listed assets, amount of personal transactions, expenses paid in cash or from accounts NOT listed in the books, open invoices, open bills, unreconciled bank accounts, and many other factors, etc…
The most typical questions we ask, in order to help us “assess” the complexity and to understand your accounting, are the following:
- What industry are you in? What are your annual sales? How many years in business?
- Are you an LLC or Corporation? Which state are you incorporated in?
- What do you use now to handle your accounting? QuickBooks Desktop, Online, Other/Spreadsheets?
- How many bank accounts and/or credit card accounts do you have? how many transactions run through all those in a monthly basis? Which banks do you use?
- Do you have payroll? How many employees? Run through QuickBooks Payroll, Manually, or 3rd party processor?
- Do you have subcontractors? did you file 1099 forms?
- Are all your expenses from bank accounts and credit cards? or do you pay some in cash?
- Are the there cars/trucks leased and/or purchased?
- Do you make personal expenses with you business accounts?
- how many invoices and/or deposits do you do per month?
- How many CHECKS do you write by hand vs. Print?
- How many debit card / credit card transactions do you do pe month?
- Are you books caught up to 12/31/2017?
- Is your 2016 tax return complete? Can we see you last year’s tax return?
- How often do you expect to call us in a monthly basis with accounting / tax questions?
- How do you prefer we contact you to ask you questions about your books?
In average, when someone that we have never worked before gets the full service: revision of the books, basic adjustments to QuickBooks, Corporate Tax Return, and Personal Tax return, people pay about $1,950; but every case is different and we really want to give people a FLAT RATE, rather than a bill based on an arbitrary $250/hour, as most of our colleagues charge.
If you want us to determine the price, check out this checklist of items we need in order to provide a quote, we will try to get most of the answers from above with the documents you provide.
After the first year, things significantly improve, maybe we can help you with your books more proactively, or train you on using QuickBooks more efficiently, etc… Our fees tend to stabilize as the work gets more predictable.
What is a “tax return ready” financial statement?
Check out this article: https://qbkaccounting.com/tax-return-ready-financial-statement/
