IntraScope Accounting Solutions, LLC

 

 

May 2002 Edition

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Tax Tip

 

Should you be making estimated tax payments?  The law requires that you pay in 90% of current year tax either through withholding or estimated tax payments. There are two exceptions:  1.  Your tax liability after withholding is less than $1000 or  2.  You pay in 100% of last year’s tax liability.  (If your adjusted gross income is greater than $150,000, you are required to pay in 110%).  This last option is called “filing safe” because we avoid the potential for penalties without knowing your tax liability.  I generally recommend my clients file safe each year.  If you don’t believe your withholding this year will meet the exception #2 above, please give me a call and we can discuss your options.

 

Accounting

 

I am often asked if it is better to lease or purchase a car.  The best answer to this is to run the numbers but I can give you a couple rules of thumb to help you make the decision.  First, the short-term monthly cost of leasing is significantly less than the cost of buying.  If you want lower monthly costs, like driving a new car every 2 – 3 years and can keep within the mileage allowed, leasing may make more sense.  The long-term cost of leasing is more than the cost of buying, assuming the buyer keeps the vehicle.   If you want to own your car and be payment free for a while or you put a lot of miles on your car, purchasing may be the better choice. 

 

 

Did you know…..

 

There are new rules on continued health insurance (COBRA).  Companies that normally have 20 or more employees are affected.  They must tell departing workers they have the option to buy continued coverage for at least 18 months.  If the notices are not timely sent, the company will be fined $45 a day and may have an additional fine of another $110 per day.

 

QuickBooks

 

Are you making regular back-ups of your QuickBooks file?  If not, you may be courting disaster.  Occasionally, a client has to recreate days or even months of their accounting records because something happened to their computer or the file.   I highly recommend you backup on a regular basis, either weekly or monthly.  You should have at least two separate backups so if one set of backups doesn’t work, the other one will.  In addition, I occasionally try to restore from the backup to make sure the media is working correctly.  It is also a good idea to keep your year-end backup permanently.