Before 2018, selling online to customers in other states was relatively simple from a sales tax perspective — if you didn’t have a physical presence there, you generally didn’t owe that state’s sales tax. The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair changed everything. Today, online businesses that reach sales thresholds in other […]
How Pass-Through Entities Are Taxed: A Complete Guide for Business Owners
The majority of U.S. businesses — sole proprietorships, partnerships, S-Corporations, and most LLCs — are “pass-through entities.” That means the business itself doesn’t pay federal income tax. Instead, business income passes through to the owners’ personal tax returns, where it’s taxed at individual rates. Understanding how pass-through taxation works — and how to optimize it […]
Claiming the Research & Development Tax Credit for Your Business
The Research and Development (R&D) Tax Credit is one of the most valuable — and most underutilized — tax credits in the federal tax code. Many business owners, especially outside the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries, assume they don’t qualify. That assumption costs them money every year. Software development. Process improvement engineering. Product testing. Custom tooling […]
Small Business Budgeting Guide: How Utah Business Owners Build Budgets That Work
A budget is a plan expressed in numbers. Without one, spending decisions are reactive — made in the moment based on available cash rather than a strategic view of where the business needs to go. With one, you know in advance whether a hiring decision is affordable, whether a marketing spend will require a draw […]
Cash Flow Management for Utah Small Businesses: A Practical Guide
Cash flow is the lifeblood of a small business & the most common cause of business failure for companies that are otherwise profitable. You can show a profit on your P&L and still run out of cash if your customers pay slowly, your expenses are front-loaded, or your growth is outpacing your capital. This guide […]
Choosing the Right Business Entity Structure for Your Utah Business
Your business structure is the foundation on which every other financial and legal decision rests. It determines how you’re taxed, how much personal liability protection you have, how you can bring in investors or partners, and what your options are when you eventually want to exit. Choosing correctly the first time saves years of restructuring […]
Small Business Payroll Processing Guide for Utah Employers
Running payroll correctly is one of the most consequential compliance obligations a small business employer faces. Unlike many tax issues where errors can be corrected at year-end, payroll tax failures compound in real time — late deposits accumulate interest and penalties, misclassified workers create years of back liability, and missed filings trigger IRS notices that […]
Bookkeeping for Small Business Beginners: A Plain-English Guide for Utah Business Owners
Bookkeeping is the systematic recording of your business’s financial transactions. Done consistently, it gives you accurate, real-time insight into your business’s financial health. Done poorly — or not at all — it creates tax problems, cash flow surprises, and the kind of year-end scramble that costs far more in accounting fees than consistent monthly bookkeeping […]
LLC Tax Guide: Filing Requirements and Planning Strategies for Utah Business Owners
An LLC is the most popular business structure in Utah — flexible, protective, and relatively simple to form. But “LLC” is a legal classification, not a tax classification. How your LLC is taxed depends on elections you make (or don’t make), the number of members, and whether you’ve optimized your structure for your income level. […]
Strategies to Reduce Self-Employment Tax for Business Owners
Self-employment tax is often the single largest tax burden on profitable small business owners — and the one most consistently overlooked in tax planning. At 15.3% on net self-employment income up to $168,600 (and 2.9% above that), SE tax frequently exceeds the income tax liability of profitable sole proprietors and single-member LLC owners. The good […]
