Looking past the obvious bias, the answer is yes. Let’s profile a few individuals that are self-employed or freelance and show how they could benefit from a CPA. Hopefully you can relate to at least one of these:
1. The “Simple” Taxpayer. I can’t count how many times folks come to me and say “I’m a normal person. My tax situation is simple. I get a w-2; I don’t have any property; i don’t have many investments; I’ve always filed my own taxes.” On the face - maybe that sounds reasonable to you, but let’s think about this a little deeper.
As unfortunate as it is, polls show over 60% of Americans would fail a financial literacy test. Now those tests don’t just talk about taxes, which even fewer people really know and understand. So odds are Mr. Simple doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And that’s totally not his fault. We have a major problem with under-educating our population about taxes.
If Mr. Simple does his own taxes, it’s also likely they don’t have any sort of financial advisor beyond a friend, family member or using google. With other things to worry about like insurance amounts and finding clients, they put taxes on the back-burner.
Most of us are like that - it’s okay, but unless you really want to teach yourself taxes, money, and expenses, you’re probably not going to learn enough to help yourself. We file taxes every year! Things change every year! *cough, cough Trump Tax plan.* Good luck keeping up with everything. We have a hard enough time and it’s our day job.
The worst-case scenario of having a CPA for our self-employed or freelance Mr. Simple: he’s compliant with his taxes, he’s tax efficient, he has a resource to learn about various aspects of his personal finances, and he has piece of mind that someone will look out for him. sounds like a win to me.
2. Taxes for Freelancers - take everything I just said for our self-employed or freelance Mr. Simple and times it by 10. Our tax system is soooo not built for the gig economy. Rather than writing a book here, you should DEFINITELY go to VisorVision.co and give it a whirl. You’ll learn more in 90 seconds about taxes that your entire life combined. Promise.
3. The “It’s Complicated” Tax Status - So maybe you’re not so “simple” anymore. Hopefully you got a nice amount of money or a pay raise or new job. Maybe you recently had a kid or will expense buying a house. You might be looking for accountants for the self-employed because things are getting a little bit unmanageable to do it all yourself. And most likely, you still don’t know what you don’t know. Most people that reach this point realize and admit they could use some help and almost always the first place they go is to a CPA. We CPA’s see have seen a lot in our day. With 35+ years of tax and accounting experience and over 1200 clients there isn’t much that surprises us these days, which means a CPA is an excellent resource to give you advice on things that don’t even have to do with taxes or small business accounting. Odds are if we can’t help, we know someone who can help with your income or expenses.
4. The Entrepreneur - Greetings, Ms. CEO. I see you’ve started a business recently and it’s rock’n and roll’n. Congrats! Color us impressed. We know how hard it is to start a business, especially in a town like NYC, we’ve done it and we live that life every day. No need to do self-employed bookkeeping or be a self-employed accountant. By now, you probably know the importance of taxes and having a professional CPA deal with the expenses and form filing. The big question is what does your CPA do for you besides calling you once a year for your 1099’s? Burton & Co, CPAs are more than your parents old “Tax guy” you’ve been using for years. We’re partners to our clients. We educate our clients. We take the time and go the extra mile because we care about our clients’ success. Take your business and personal finances to the next level with a CPA that really cares about your well-being and understands the business environment you’re navigating through. It’s a Jumanji world out there – let’s us be your Alan Parish.
A CPA is like your emergency contact. You know the one in the group that’s super responsible, reliable, and will always support you. That’s definitely the person I want called after getting hit by a NYC MTA bus. Legal problems? Best leave that to the lawyers. Dating woes? That’s a job for Mom. Medical? A doctor of course. But for everything else, a CPA is normally high on the most-called-people list for your personal and business needs. If it has a number in it, good chances you’ll think to call your CPA fore solutions. Numbers don’t scare us! We wrangle up those numbers like a lasso contest at the local rodeo, but switch the rope for a gigantic printing calculator. Have you ever seen one of things?? We got a bunch and they’re awesome. Sometimes we take those paper strips, frame them and give them as gifts to our clients. After a tax season we have enough calculator paper to wallpaper our entire Florida Office. And on Halloween we take the extra paper rolls and throw them on the Office buildings of competing accounting firms and corporate finance companies to let them know who’s boss. Not really, but that would be kinda great.