My husband has just opened a small business. He only has one employee right now, but I feel like in the next year or so he could have several employees. We want to make sure we’re doing everything correctly as far as taxes, etc…. I manage budgets, track expenses & profits, and file FSR reports with my current employer. I feel like I could keep his books organized, but I’m not sure about the rest. We are def. wanting someone to do our taxes. We are meeting with a CPA today to discuss our options. We don’t have a ton of $ so we would like to do as much ourselves as we can. I have looked into Quickbooks with the payroll option. Has anyone used this? How easy is the payroll option? Would I be able to do this vs. paying the CPA to do payroll. I’m just worried about deducting taxes from payroll and how/when to pay the taxes. Will the program tell me that? Anyone know of other services that might be helpful from the CPA that can save us $$? I am a smart woman and I know if someone shows me I can learn the system. However, I’m not sure a CPA would be willing to show me, as they would rather me just pay them. Can I do this myself or am I just getting over my head? What is feasible to do yourself?
Also, how does he pay himself? Does he set a salary like $30,000 a year or does he get a % of the profits? I read about the self-employment tax and you don’t want to pay yourself too much. How do you get around that and still bring in enough income?
Any other relevant info would be helpful. We need all the $ we can get as we are a young family w/ kids. I just feel like I’m walking blindly into this.
quickbooks is awesome and will do just what you need it too.. we are a small business with only 4 employees and i use quickbooks 2009 to do everything,payroll, payroll taxes,etc.. you will of coarse need a CPA to set it up and to show you how to do everything.. but after that, it’s easy..
as for his salary.. definitely take a weekly salary.. your CPA can advise on that.
you could also look into taking a quickbooks class…
i’m in florida and if you were local i would definitely help you out…