How To Avoid Accounting Firm Scams

Many people worry about being scammed through an accountant firm. This can make it hard to look for an accounting firm in North Hollywood. How do you know who to trust and who not to?  Oftentimes people have heard stories about celebrities and regular people alike being scammed out of everything they ever had, embezzled by a fraudulent accountant. It’s important to know how to avoid having this happen to you or your business. There are things that you can do and signs to look for to avoid any sort of accounting firm scam or any fraudulent accountants. Here we have compiled a list of some tips to help you stay financially safe.

Use A Trusted Service It’s important to use a trusted and reliable accountants to handle your finances and help you with tax audit in Los Angeles. A referral from a friend or business colleague is usually a good place to start. When you’re meeting with an accounting firm that you’re thinking about using, you should also ask about what type of internal controls the firm has in place to combat any potential of fraud.

Don’t Become Complacent While having a “money guy” is nice. It allows you to take a certain amount of weight, stress and anxiety off of your shoulders, it shouldn’t be an excuse to be lazy. You should still know how much money is in your accounts and how much your making. You should also be sure to not give your accountant access to all of your accounts. This is often where problems and scams happen. If an accountant has access to all of your accounts and can move money as he or she so pleases, the odds of you getting scammed and taken advantage of go up exponentially. You should review all reports and statements monthly. Staying on top of your finances is one of the most important things that you can do to prevent an accounting firm scam from happening to you.

Avoid Online Firms If an accounting firm contacts you online to handle your finances, but has no physical presence that you can find and promises to get you rich through some investment, this is almost certainly a scam. To avoid any accounting firm scams, you should use a trusted and professional service like Capital Finance Network. They are a great accounting firm in North Hollywood, ready to help you and your businesses finances today.

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How to Evaluate Performance of Accounting Company

Many people decide that they need an accountant to help handle their personal or business finances. Utilizing a firm can be a great way to keep track of your cash, assets and investments. An accountant can help you prepare for taxes and utilize deductibles and programs you very well may have otherwise not known about. A firm is also a great way to develop a plan for the future, but sometimes finding an accounting company in Los Angeles can be hard work. Here we’ve put together some tips on how to find a great accounting firm in Los Angeles.

Word Of Mouth As with many things, you can find a good firm through asking your friends, family and colleagues who they use for tax prep Los Angeles. Most people have an accountant or firm that they know and trust. These are often the firms that you will want to go to though it’s important to remember that your needs may not be the same as the needs of your friends and family. You may need someone to help you prepare your taxes and structure your small business's finances while your friend recommends you to a firm that almost strictly does tax prep. If multiple people recommend a particular firm to you that can be a good sign of one to try.

Research Going online and looking up different accountant firm’s websites and reviews is a great way to develop a list of firms to give a call. Once you have a list together of a couple of firms that you’ve heard good things about, start to give them a call. During the call, you should have a list of questions you want to ask them. You also want to discuss with them their services in general. You should always make sure that any firm you are looking at is certified and reputable.

Meet With Prospective Accounting Companies Once you have narrowed down your list to maybe two or three accountants, start to take meetings with them. It’s important to keep in mind that this will be the beginning of an important and long term relationship. While you don’t necessarily have to be friends with you accountant, they should be someone that you trust and get along with. An accountant is not just someone that does your taxes, but someone that helps you structure your business or personal finances for success. They’re someone that can really play a pivotal role in helping you reach your future financial goals.  You want to choose a professional, friendly and experienced accounting company in Los Angeles like Capital Financial Network.

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How An Accounting Firm Can Help You With Bookkeeping Services

Many people think about accounting firms for just their taxes, but they are also a great service to use for bookkeeping. You may be wondering why you would use an accounting firm for your bookkeeping service, especially if you already take care of your bookkeeping in house, but with an accounting firm you get a more professional and reliable experience. A trusted CPA will be able to do a much more orderly and accurate job than just an employee.

Having an outside accounting firm handling your books is one of the best ways to catch internal fraud. One of the things that leads to businesses, especially small-to-medium size businesses, experiencing the debilitating effects of embezzlement is having one employee who handles bookkeeping. This puts an employee in a great position to take advantage of the company. Having just one or even two employees who keep complete track and control of a company’s books is almost always a recipe for disaster. Sometimes a business can be taken advantage of so severely that they are forced to file for bankruptcy. With an accounting firm handling your books, they can assist you with putting in place financial controls to prevent or mitigate the risk of fraud. They can also monitor, track and investigate unknown expenses.

Having an accounting firm handle your books is also a big time save for you. Many small business owners stress and worry about the small detail financial elements of having a business, but with an accounting firm helping with your bookkeeping, you won’t have to worry about that. This allows you to save time and to focus on what you love most, your business.

If you have an employee who is doing your bookkeeping for you, you can save money by hiring an accountant, especially if that employee is full-time. Using an accounting firm for your bookkeeping is also a great way to get outside business advice. Accountants can make  suggestions and guide you towards different decisions that will save you money on your taxes and help you to make more money. This is something that you just won’t get if you don’t use an accounting firm for your bookkeeping service. If you are looking for an accounting firm los angeles to help you with bookkeeping services, you should use the Capital Financial Network, the best accounting firm in all of Los Angeles.

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How To Start Preparing For Taxes

Beginning tax preparations can be a daunting task. It can seem easy to make big expensive mistakes or miss out on possible unknown deductions, but it doesn’t have to be that difficult or stressful. A few easy tips and strategies can help you stay on top of things and make tax time a breeze.

One very important key to tax preparation is being organized. You should make sure that you are saving all necessary receipts and forms. It can be a good idea to keep all this information together in one place so that you don’t lose it. While this isn’t a complete list, things that you want to keep together and save are W-2 Forms, SSA-1099 if you’re on Social Security, Form 1095A and 1099s. Typically, a good rule of thumb is if you’re not sure if you will need it come tax time, save it. In addition to receipts of possible tax write offs like receipts of supplies for a home office or mileage for a entrepreneur, you should also make sure to save records of any charitable contributions, which are tax deductible in many cases. Many people don’t realize that in order to claim a charitable contribution that’s over $250, you need a written acknowledgement(typically a letter) from the charity you contributed to that states not only the amount that you gave, but also that you didn’t receive anything in exchange for your gift.

Another thing to keep in mind when preparing for taxes is any personal finance or tax law changes. Of course, you don’t have to be reading through the nitty gritty details of the tax code yourself, but keeping up on major changes to the tax code could help you avoid any surprises. Some programs that you may be benefiting from like the home-equity loan interest tax deduction and certain deductions from job-related expenses will soon be coming to an end. Preparing for this by maybe putting aside more money or expecting less of a refund can help you from being in a financial hard spot come tax time. It’s also important to keep in mind and consider changing amounts withheld if you or your spouse are making significantly more or less money. If you or your spouse got a promotion, it can be a good idea to look up your new tax bracket (if you fall into one) and how much more you may want to have withheld. This is all to avoid having to pay anything come tax time. Oftentimes, when people make more money through a promotion or successful business season, they forget to have more money withheld causing them to end up with an unpleasant bill come tax time.

While these tips will help, it’s always a good idea to go to an accounting firm to get some professional assistance. If you’re looking for an Accounting Firm Los Angeles for Tax Prep Los Angeles, Capital Financial Network is a great place to get expert assistance in handling all your personal financial matters.

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How To Save On Your Taxes

Everybody wants to know how to save money on their taxes through either deductions or tax credits, anything to lower the amount you may have to pay or to increase the size of your refund. There are many popular deductions and credits that a lot of people just don’t know about or utilize like real estate taxes, student loan interest deductions or mortgage interest deductions.

One tax credit you should check to see if you qualify for is the earned income tax credit. This is credit has different qualifications, one of them being that you must make less than fifty thousand dollars a year. This is a credit that a lot of people do not realize that they may qualify for. A sometimes under-utilized way to save on your taxes is to start a business. If you have your own business you have more control with how you pay taxes. Many business owners decide to keep funds in their businesses or business accounts firm so they don’t have to draw it out as taxable income. If you are running a business, you can also right off certain expenditures as expenses that can help you reduce your tax burden.

For those that have children, you should look into many of the tax benefits available to you. The child tax credit can be up to a thousand dollars for each child under the age of seventeen. It’s important to note that this tax credit it not available for high-earners. For those that pay alimony, those payments are tax deductible as well. As a parent, creating a 529 college savings accounts for your child or children allows you to not only save your child’s future, but also allows you to not have to pay taxes on that money either.

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Tax Scams To Beware Of

Even though tax season is over, it is still important to remain alert for any tax scams by groups pretending to be the Internal Revenue Service. Some of the most common types of scams perpetrated are telephone scams and phishing emails. While most of these scams seem to follow the same basic structure, you should be wary of ever disclosing important personal information like account passwords or your Social Security number to another party.

One of the most common types of scams perpetrated is a phone scam. It is important to note that the Internal Revenue Service does not call and leave automated messages, insisting that you call them back. Sadly, many times the victim is told that they could be penalized or even arrested if they don’t call back. These type of scams obvious play to people’s fears, but again the Internal Revenue Service does not call like that in the first place. Criminals can even make it seem like they’re calling from an actual IRS office. This leads many people to believe that the call is in fact authentic. Fraudulent callers have made it seem like they were calling from federal agencies, local sheriff offices and others to seem more legitimate to their victims, thus making it more likely that their victims will pay up.

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What to Know About Payroll?

For many small business owners, the process of payroll can be very bothersome and time-consuming. It can be even more so if you don’t have an outside firm doing it for you. The National Business Association conducted a survey in 2013 in which they determined that about sixty percent of small businesses process their payroll themselves. For obvious reasons like IRS penalties or possibly disgruntled employees, it is important to handle your payroll properly and with care. Here are some tips to make your payroll go as smoothly as possible.

One of the main things to determine in setting up a payroll system is whether you are going to pay your employees by salary or hourly. By having salaried employees, you can take a lot of the figuring out of determining how many hours your employees worked each month exactly and therefore how much they should be paid. If you do opt to pay your employees hourly, it is incumbent upon you to have some sort of dedicated system that tracks every employees hours worked.

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