All right:
- Tax season is over
- You’ve seen your accountant
- Your tax preparer got a chance to go on vacation
Now what?
While it is imperative during tax season that you see your tax preparer to get your taxes done, it is more important to see your tax preparer in the tax “off-season.” Your accountant has a wealth of information about how to lower your taxes that he or she is willing to share with you during the “off-season.”
For instance: types of investments, tax-exempt investments, long-term-gain investments, offsetting gains with losses, passive income and loss analysis, deferred compensation plans, state tuition (section 529) accounts. These are among the myriad of things that tax preparers can suggest that will help you to pay less next year.
As anyone in my profession knows, it is very tough on both the client and the professional when you have to deliver news that tax is owed. And it’s especially tough when that tax could have been avoided through a simple phone call or visit during the tax “off-season.” Unfortunately, if you have not made that call or visit, then by the time you sit down with your accountant to prepare your tax return, it’s too late to do anything except cry together.
2013 taxes are filed unless you have an extension, so there is very little that can be done now concerning that year. 2014 taxes will be due next April, so the time to do something about them is during 2014, not during tax filing season of 2015.
Please don’t leave your tax preparer lonely throughout the rest of the year. He or she is willing to help. Visit them. Call them. Get in touch with them, and they can provide you with guidance to ease the burden of taxes for the 2014 tax year.
Stephen J. Ganns, CPA
914-682-7007
steve@gannscpa.com
www.gannscpa.com
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