Business Tax Preparation Without the March Panic

Partnerships and multi-member LLCs (Form 1065). The partnership itself generally pays no federal income tax; Form 1065 reports the results and splits them across owner K-1s according to the operating agreement. The traps live in the details: special allocations, partner capital account reporting, guaranteed payments, and basis tracking that determines whether a loss on a K-1 is actually deductible this year. Real estate partnerships add depreciation and passive-loss layers on top.

S corporations (Form 1120-S). Also a pass-through, but with a payroll requirement: the owner must take reasonable W-2 compensation before distributions. The return has to hold together across three documents at once (the 1120-S, the W-2s, and the K-1s), and inconsistencies among them are exactly what IRS matching looks for. We prepare the return with the payroll records in hand, not reconstructed from memory.

C corporations (Form 1120). The entity pays its own tax at the flat 21% federal rate, files its own estimates, and interacts with the owners through wages and dividends. Most small businesses should not be C corps, but for the ones that should (outside investors, retained earnings, certain benefit structures), the return includes officer compensation support and book-to-tax reconciliation that gets real scrutiny in an exam.

Not sure your entity is the right one in the first place? That is a planning question, not a preparation question, and it is the first thing addressed in our small business tax planning service, alongside the LLC vs S corp comparison.

• Operating businesses with a real return to file: an S corp, partnership, or C corp, or a Schedule C business with payroll, contractors, or meaningful assets. Revenue typically $100,000 to $10 million.
• Multi-entity owners. An operating company plus rentals, or several partnerships feeding one personal return. Coordinating the K-1 flow is the core of the service, not an upcharge surprise.
• Businesses with multi-state exposure: remote employees, out-of-state customers or property, or owners living in a different state than the business files in.
• Owners who want the business and personal returns coordinated. The entity return decisions (depreciation elections, accountable plans, owner comp) land on your 1040. One firm preparing both means those decisions are made once, correctly.

• The federal entity return (1065, 1120-S, or 1120) with all required schedules, prepared and reviewed by CPAs and filed electronically.
• State business returns in every state where you have a filing obligation, with apportionment worked, not guessed.
• Owner K-1s prepared with the return and delivered to every owner, with plain-English notes on what changed from last year.
• Depreciation schedule maintenance: fixed assets tracked year over year, with Section 179 and bonus depreciation elections made deliberately, not by software default.
• Extension management and estimated payment vouchers: protective extensions filed by the original deadline, and quarterly estimate figures for the entity or the owners as the structure requires.
• Coordination with owner personal returns, prepared here or delivered as a clean K-1 package to the owner's own preparer.

Every pass-through owner has lived some version of this: it is early April, your personal return is ready except for one thing, and that thing is a K-1 someone has not issued yet. K-1s are due to owners by the entity return's deadline, including extensions, which means a slow business return holds every owner's personal filing hostage into the fall.

Our K-1 workflow is built around three commitments:

• K-1s ship with the return, not after it. Owners get their K-1 the day the entity return is finalized, with a note explaining the numbers that moved.
• Basis and loss limits are tracked, not assumed. A K-1 loss is only deductible if the owner has basis to absorb it, and basis schedules that nobody maintained are one of the most common messes we inherit from prior preparers.
• QBI detail arrives usable. The qualified business income deduction is computed on the owner's return from data the K-1 must carry. We prepare the K-1 so the owner's preparer (us or anyone else) is not chasing missing statements in October.

A business creates state filing obligations ("nexus") where it has employees, property, or, in most states now, enough sales, even with no physical presence. One remote hire in another state can create payroll registration, withholding, and an income tax return you have never filed before. States then apportion your income among themselves using formulas that do not always add to 100%, which is why multi-state work rewards preparation and punishes improvisation.

In a Taxstra engagement, the multi-state work includes:

• A nexus review: where you actually owe filings, based on employees, property, and sales by state.
• State return preparation with apportionment worked from your books, plus composite or withholding filings for out-of-state owners where states require them.
• Pass-through entity tax (PTET) elections evaluated, where a state-level election can convert an owner's capped state tax deduction into a deductible entity-level tax.
• Resident-state credit coordination on the owners' personal returns, so the same dollar is not fully taxed twice.

Multi-state issues that go beyond the business return (relocations, remote-worker withholding, moving a business between states) are covered by our dedicated multi-state tax service.

Step 1: Onboarding (any time of year, ideally before December).

Free initial consultation, fixed quote, then document collection: prior returns, the depreciation schedule, entity documents, and access to the books. If we also do your bookkeeping, this step mostly already exists.

Step 2: Year-end close and open items (January to February).

The books are closed, adjusting entries made, and a single open-items list goes to you. You answer one organized list once, instead of drip-fed questions for two months.

Step 3: Preparation, review, and delivery (February onward).

The return is prepared, reviewed by a second set of CPA eyes, and delivered with a summary of what changed and why. K-1s go to owners the same day. You approve, we e-file, and you get confirmation.

Step 4: Extension or file, plus the estimates that follow.

If facts are still settling, we extend by the original deadline with tax paid in, then file when the numbers are right. Either way, the return feeds next year's quarterly estimates, and the year-end planning conversation happens before December, not during filing season. Our year-end tax planning checklist is the between-seasons companion to this service.

Four factors drive the quote:

Taxstra business return engagements are quoted as fixed fees after a free initial consultation, with single-entity, single-state returns on clean books starting in the low four figures and bundled bookkeeping-plus-tax engagements priced monthly. On average, owners who bundle books and tax pay less in total than they paid separately, because nobody is billing to decode anyone else's file.

Client experiences are public on our Google reviews. Industry depth matters on business returns too: real estate operators, law firms, and physicians each have their own pages and their own return quirks we handle routinely.