Improve Business Cash Flow with  
Specialized Tax Incentives 

Business cash flow gets renewed attention when it’s that time of year again when business owners, CFOs and Controllers wince at the prospect of paying, or delay paying, another large income tax bill.

The biggest concern small and midsize businesses have with their accountants – who they generally trust – is they think they could be doing more to reduce their taxes and help improve their cash flow.

And they’re usually right about that. The problem is that many tax incentives require special expertise – and it’s not accounting expertise – to document and claim their savings in ways that pass IRS muster.

Many businesses have no tax strategy. They treat their taxes like they’re an overhead expense – fixed costs they can’t control.

This isn’t smart business practice.

You have a business strategy, right?  So why no tax strategy?

You probably want to minimize your taxes, but don’t know where to start.

“My Accountant Handles That”

Maybe you’re content thinking your accountant already handles that for you – because you don’t want to “go there” anyway.

But if they did, you’d remember the fat refund or tax credit check you deposited in your bank account.

If you have no such fond memories, you’re kidding yourself about this already being handled for you.

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Big corporations know better. They maximize tax incentives to boost their bottom lines and free-up business cash flow for reinvestment.

As a result, they enjoy the lion’s share of tax incentives while up to an estimated 95% of eligible mid-size and smaller businesses miss out.

The irony, of course, is that these are the businesses most likely to reinvest tax incentive payments back into job growth and their local economies.

Mid-size and smaller businesses already account for the vast majority of job growth in America. Think of how much more job growth and stability there’d be if they were able to access the new working capital that tax incentives provide via hiring incentives like Employee Retention Tax Credits of up to $28,000 per employee for simply retaining employees through December 31, 2021, Work Opportunity Tax Credits (WOTC) and other federal and state hiring incentives.

Yet they remain mostly in the dark about how to put these tax incentives to work for their business.

Why?

Why Tax Strategies that Improve Business Cash Flow Prove So Elusive

There are a number of reasons, of course, but here are the three main ones…

1. You Assume You Don’t Qualify -If you’re like the majority of small and mid-size businesses, you probably assume you don’t qualify for tax incentives like the big boys anyway, right?

Very often – wrong!

The simplest incentive available relates to building costs to buy, build or renovate of $500,000 or more, or leasehold improvements of $250,000 or more. Claiming accelerated depreciation for a portion of these costs requires engineering-based cost segregation studies that separate personal from real property. This is best done by farming out this study to accelerate depreciation on your building(s) so you pay less in taxes now and a bit more later (every dollar in your account is worth more now than later, of course).

And the misnamed R&D tax credit is in actuality a payroll tax credit for certain employee activities like quality control and process improvements. If you make anything – from design to production to even construction – you may very well qualify, no lab coats or industry breakthroughs required.

2. General Practice Accountants – Most mid-size and smaller businesses use mid-size and smaller accounting firms. This means they can miss out on the specialized tax services the Big 4 and large regional accounting firms offer their bigger corporate clients.

Most smaller accounting firms are tax generalists ill-equipped for specialized tax incentives that require engineering, intellectual property, and other specialized expertise. It’s similar to the difference between general practice and specialist physicians – both serve important functions, but you miss out on a lot without access to the specialists.

You essentially end up falling through the cracks between your generalist accountant and the engineering and other specialists needed to minimize risk and optimize your tax savings.

3. Yuck!…It’s about taxes.

Most of us don’t like paying taxes – or even thinking about them.

We may complain about them – a lot – but we often avoid actually doing much about them.

For many, the preferred path is simply to avoid thinking about them until their accountant forces them to do their annual or quarterly tax filing. That’s enough already.

Which means the biggest tax problem for many mid-size and smaller businesses isn’t tax evasion, but tax savings evasion.

Your head knows there are smarter ways to manage your corporate taxes, but your heart keeps telling you to look away. And there are usually enough pressing matters in running your business to reinforce this harmful predisposition.

Excuses, Excuses…

These are all understandable excuses for ignoring the tax incentives the government offers your business. But that’s all they are – excuses.

You only need one excuse for failure – and no one wants to hear it.

You manage to get beyond excuses in other aspects of your business. Do the same with your taxes – bring in the specialized tax expertise your business needs to work with your accountants to get the tax savings and incentives your business deserves.

You’ve already earned them – and are essentially giving the government an interest-free loan or worse, a gift – when you neglect to collect these tax savings.

You can get started with no risk. If we can’t find tax savings for your business, there’s no fee for our services trying.

No savings, no fee.

Click the orange button below to use our online tax savings calculator for a free and instant estimate of your potential tax savings…