Business owners
The closely held year-end.
A South Florida checklist for owner-operators. The useful conversations belong in November. April is where you pay for the ones you skipped.
Closely held means the company’s year and the household’s year are the same story. Compensation, distributions, estimated tax, a truck, a hire, a building on University or in the Parkland warehouse district — they all land on one kitchen table, whether the entities admit it or not.
Before December 31
Compensation. S corporation owners still have to take a reasonable salary. “Reasonable” is not a mood. It is a number you can defend if the return is ever read by someone who does not love you.
Distributions and basis. You cannot distribute what you do not have basis to take. The time to learn that is not when the K-1 is printed.
Estimated tax. Florida has no personal income tax, which makes it easy to forget that the federal estimates still come due. Underpayment penalties are a boring way to spend money.
Retirement and benefits. Some plans can be adopted after year-end. Some cannot. The ones that cannot are the ones people ask about in March.
Fixed assets and the last invoice. Bonus depreciation and Section 179 are not decorations. They require a placed-in-service date that is real. A truck sitting at the dealer on January 2 is a next-year truck.
The conversation we want
Bring a draft of the year — not a perfect close, a picture. We will tell you which levers are still attached and which ones you already let go of. That is the difference between a CPA who files and a CPA who plans.
General information only. Entity type, basis, and the code in force for the year will change the answer. Sit down before you act.