The CFO for Small BusinessA Tax CFO for a small business
You're looking for a Tax CFO for a small business, and you'd like to know what that adds to a once-a-year tax preparer. Steven Palmieri is a Tax CFO. The role pairs bookkeeping, return preparation and year-round planning in one team, which lets both sides of an owner's money be planned at once. This page explains what that looks like at small scale.
Ask what a Tax CFO plans
The books, the return and the plan in one place
Most owners deal with a preparer who sees the year once, after it's over. The books are somewhere else. The planning, if any, is a separate conversation. Each person has part of the picture. A Tax CFO holds all three. Month by month the books get closed. The return then draws on them, and so does your plan for the year.
The April number, known in the fall
When the books close monthly, the year's profit is visible while the year is still open. The tax that profit will produce can be estimated, and the owner can see it coming. That turns April from a surprise into something you've already planned for.
Choices made while there is still time
In the fall, a few choices are still open. Owner pay can be set, and checked against the profit. Equipment can be bought now or later. Retirement contributions can be talked through before their deadlines. Each one is a cash decision and a tax decision at once, and the Tax CFO puts both on one page. No result is promised. The point is that you decide with your eyes open, with time left.
Both returns from the same books
If you own a pass-through business, your personal return and the business return should tell the same story. When the same people prepare both from the same closed books, nothing gets entered twice and nothing disagrees. Business profit on your personal taxes shows why the two connect.
Planning is part of the month
Tax planning isn't a separate product here. It happens within the monthly work, when each month closes and the estimates and decisions come naturally from the numbers. You don't buy a plan once a year and put it in a drawer. You get a conversation that keeps happening.
Roles, described fairly
A once-a-year tax preparer does honest, useful work, and many owners need nothing more. Preparing a return is a skill, and doing it well matters. What a Tax CFO adds is the time before the return, when choices can still be made. One counts what happened. The other decides what happens next, for the business and for the owner together.
What it asks of you
Not much. You keep sending invoices and keeping receipts. We close the month, and you spend a short time reading it with us. A few times a year, we sit down to look further ahead at your pay and your estimates. Paying yourself with your taxes in mind shows the first of those conversations.
Whether it fits
If your business is very small, with a few transactions a month, you may not need this yet, and we'll say so. Does a small business need a CFO gives the signs on both sides.
Both sides. This page's subject is that a Tax CFO keeps your personal return and the company's return in view together, so the choice that helps one doesn't quietly hurt the other.
What would you want planned before the year ends?
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.