My first year freelancing, I made about $60K. Thought I was doing great until April rolled around and I owed $11,000. Had maybe $2,000 in my account. That was a rough week. Turns out, when you’re self-employed, Uncle Sam wants his money spread throughout the year, not in one giant lump sum. It would’ve been nice if someone had mentioned that before I quit my day job. The Basics Nobody Explained to Me Here’s what…
Someone died and left you in charge of their mess. Or maybe you’re inheriting something and just realized New Jersey might want a piece of it. Either way, you’re probably panicking a little because taxes and death are two things nobody wants to deal with at the same time. I get it. I was executor for my uncle’s estate three years ago and spent the first two weeks convinced I was going to accidentally commit…
When I started my small business two years ago, I thought I could handle all my finances with one simple system. Personal expenses, business expenses, all mixed together in the same spreadsheet. My accountant looked at my records and just shook her head. She said I was making things way harder than they needed to be. Turns out personal and business accounting are completely different things. I learned this after spending weeks trying to sort…
Ugh, tax season. Just typing those words makes my stomach turn a little, and I’m betting you feel the same way. But here’s the thing—I’ve been helping New Jersey business owners with their taxes for years, and the ones who get started early are always way less stressed come April. They’re also the ones who usually end up paying less in taxes because they actually find deductions they didn’t know existed. Last year, I had…
Two-factor authentication. It’s something that has become more common to any one of us that uses a computer, smartphone, or tablet. As culture and society from the United States of America to around the world becomes more cloud-based in a digital world – passkeys, Personal Identification Numbers (PIN numbers), and even facial recognition technology are moving to the forefront to open the vault of exposed information. All of this is to prevent one thing: identity…
Running a business in New Jersey is tough enough without having to worry about whether you’re doing your taxes right. I learned this the hard way three years ago when I tried to handle my small marketing company’s taxes myself. What seemed like a good way to save money turned into a nightmare of confusing forms, missed deductions, and eventually a notice from the state that made my stomach drop. New Jersey has some pretty…
Tax season rolls around and suddenly everyone’s an expert. Your coworker swears by some app, your brother-in-law claims he saved thousands doing it himself, and meanwhile you’re staring at a pile of documents wondering what half of them even mean. Living in New Jersey doesn’t make this any easier. We pay some of the highest taxes in the country, but we also have more ways to reduce them than most people realize. The catch? You…
Every February, I watch my neighbors scramble with their tax stuff, and half of them end up complaining they barely got anything back. Meanwhile, my friend Mike down the street somehow gets a refund that pays for his family’s vacation every year. The difference? Mike figured out that doing taxes in New Jersey isn’t just about plugging numbers into TurboTax and hoping for the best. I learned this the hard way a few years back…
If you’re running a small business in Monmouth County, you know how crazy things can get. You’re dealing with customers, employees, suppliers, and a million other things that keep you up at night. But here’s something that might surprise you – the way you handle your taxes could be the difference between struggling to pay bills and actually having money left over to grow your business. Most business owners I know treat taxes like a…
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…