Last April, I sat at my kitchen table until 3 AM, surrounded by receipts, bank statements, and empty coffee cups. My laptop had seventeen tabs open, each one a different attempt to understand why my books showed I owed my business money. That’s when I finally admitted what my wife had been saying for months: “You need help.” The DIY Reality Nobody Talks About When I started my consulting business five years ago, bookkeeping seemed…
After twenty years of preparing tax returns, I can spot missed deductions from across the room. It’s become almost second nature to me, but I’m constantly amazed by how many perfectly legitimate tax breaks my clients overlook year after year. These aren’t obscure loopholes or risky strategies – they’re straightforward deductions that the IRS fully expects people to claim, yet somehow they slip through the cracks. The thing that gets me is how much money…