There’s never a perfect time to start your own business. One of our biggest obstacles is knowing all the legal red tape in actually starting one. In my professional experience I see this as the #1 reason that prevents 1000’s of would be entrepreneurs from taking the leap.

I’d like to start this discussion with a quote by Michael Corleone from The Godfather, Part II: “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer”. Now I don’t necessarily consider the IRS the enemy, however, remaining compliant with their strict guidelines is a daily challenge that I deal with in my business.

Add to that all the free resources they provide, I feelt they make it easier for people to do MY business themselves. That business would be saving you money on your taxes and doing it legally.

As a business owner the most important question you need to ask is “What is MY business?” and you need to find the answer to that before you can succeed.

With that said, much like this website itself, I know through the power of Google I can learn everything I need to design my own website. I also know other facets of web design such as updates, maintenance and optimization for search engine traffic. In fact, I even did that when I started. Why do I mention this? Because that is not MY business. I took time and effort to do something that an expert should have been doing which also took time away from my business, saving people money on their taxes and doing it legally.

Now don’t get me wrong, without a website marketing my services and people knowing who I am I would not be able to do my business. I also learned something valuable from going to countless business networking events. There I heard people go on and on about how to network and build relationships. This is also vital to building a successful business. I tried to do it myself. This again took time away from my business, saving people money on their taxes and doing it legally.

Do you see a common theme here?

In addition to the fear of the legal unknowns you’ve probably had other reservations. Common ones are “it’s too expensive to start a business”, “what if nobody wants to buy what I’m selling”, “will people try to take advantage of me”, etc, etc.

Bottom line: you WANT to start a business. You HAVE the resources out there to do everything yourself(and can probably save money in the process), however, does this take away from your business’ key objective? To serve a need!

Now this need can come in many shapes and sizes from the most noble “I want to start a non-profit to help the most dire in need” to the most vain “I want to use the vices/insecurities of others as a means to get the money I need to buy a fancy house/car/boat/airplane”.

Whatever that need is unless YOUR business IS saving people money on taxes and doing it legally then having an expert whose success or failure depends on “saving YOU money on taxes and doing it LEGALLY” is worth the minimal investment in their services.

If you’re worried about the cost of a good income tax professional here is a free resource to get you started: Starting A Business This Summer? Here’s Five Tax Tips. After checking it out and you’re ready to start a business or even grow an existing one come talk to us so we can make sure you save money on taxes and do it legally:

Also, here’s a great video from the IRS regarding their free resources:

Now in closing, back to why I used that quote above: Professional Ethics!

The code of ethics I adhere to as someone who saves people money on taxes and does it legally requires: “Enrolled agents, enrolled retirement plan agents, or registered tax return preparers, in describing their professional designation, may not utilize the term “certified” or imply an employer/employee relationship with the Internal Revenue Service.”

This means that even though my work depends on the IRS and complying with their rules and regulations, I am in no way in an “employer/employee relationship” with them. As such I need to see them as Michael Corleone saw the rival families. He was good at his business(organized crime), however, I can assure you while I can take a valuable lesson in his business strategy I would go out of business very quickly if I tried to do HIS business especially since it’s the antithesis of mine.

So I ask one last time, what is YOUR business?

When you’re ready to get the answers please call us at 623-240-9545 or shoot us an email through our Contact page(please note I have a service that filters any spam and I know a solicitation when I see it so it goes straight to the delete box. If this is your intention in contacting us please don’t waste your time or mine).