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Tax Season 2021: How a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Prepare
The 2021 tax season is in full swing, meaning that we’re all gathering documents, meeting with tax advisors, reviewing the best tax software, and trying not to panic. Though tax season can be stressful for anyone, it can be especially daunting for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Many people open businesses with a great idea and a plan, but without so much background knowledge on business tax law or accounting. Even if you do know how your business’s taxes run, it can be a scramble to assemble the right documents, find all of your receipts, and get everything entered by April 15th.
With the COVID-19 pandemic still a present threat, it can be hard to find the help you need with your documents, and it’s likely that your business had a rare situation or two that will need to be reflected on this year’s taxes. Now, more than ever, it is time to consider looking for help with tax prep. Though many normal sources of assistance are booked up or unavailable, bookkeeping virtual assistants are ready to help with your 2020 taxes.
Common Tax Preparation Roadblocks
For businesses, there are strict rules about what needs to be done during tax season. All deductions and expenses need to be accounted for, and the tax documents themselves can be confusing. Whether it’s your first tax season as a small business owner or your 30th, try to avoid these common tax season roadblocks:
- Forgetting to budget time to assemble documents. Personal taxes may only take a few hours to complete, but business taxes are much more intricate. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is waiting until the last minute to begin your taxes. Assemble all of your paperwork as early as you have it, as this process often takes longer than you think.
- Waiting to call a CPA. A Certified Public Attorney, or CPA, is one of the main sources of help during tax season. Because CPAs help with taxes, their schedules are often busy from the beginning of February until Tax Day. If you wait to call one, their services may be more expensive or unavailable altogether, and you will have to tackle your taxes alone.
- Assuming your CPA will do everything. Many people think that hiring a CPA is all they have to do for tax season, but this is absolutely not the case. A CPA cannot search through your files to find appropriate documents. If you do not have the necessary documents and receipts ready for your appointment, your CPA will be unable to help you. Remember, assembling these documents takes longer than you think, so give yourself sufficient time before your appointment to collect them.
Avoiding these simple mistakes is only part of the battle of tax season. Now is the time to look for help with your taxes.
How Can a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant Help?
Virtual assistance services can help you with a wide range of tasks and issues. Our trained bookkeeping personal assistants have experience and knowledge in taxes and online bookkeeping. They can be a great help during tax season. Here are some of the tasks that a bookkeeping virtual assistant can help you with during tax season:
- Organizing accounts. Your bookkeeping virtual assistant can make sure all of your financial accounts are in order and ready for your accountant.
- Pulling and organizing documents. Your virtual assistant can go through your online files to pull the pertinent tax documents and make sure they are ready for your CPA. If you have an online system for receipt records, your VA can assemble those as well.
- Working with a CPA directly. If you’d like, you can have your virtual assistant be the main point of contact with your accountant. Our bookkeeping virtual assistants have extensive experience with tax season and can easily work with a certified accountant to finish your taxes. In these situations, you would only be contacted if there is an issue or missing information, making your tax season stress-free.
Bookkeeping virtual assistants can only be as efficient as allowed. If you have not retained the correct documents or do not have an efficient filing system for information and monthly expenses, they are limited in how they can help. If you are intimidated by finances or don’t have accounting software for bookkeeping, consider hiring a bookkeeping virtual assistant for year-round services. Some of the services a year-round bookkeeper can provide are:
- Send and receive client invoices and organize them appropriately
- Follow up with accounts that are not balanced and get appropriate payment
- Create and send client receipts
- Maintain receipts, including copies of client receipts for your records
- Categorize expenses for easy access during tax season
If you don’t have a bookkeeper on hand, it’s in your best interest to hire a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant may or may not have previous experience in bookkeeping. At Virtual Latinos, some virtual assistants are experienced at bookkeeping, which includes the use of accounting software like Quickbooks Online. Although some of our virtual assistants don’t have specific bookkeeping experience, they are usually able to quickly learn the skill of bookkeeping. The process typically involves our clients either: a) Teach it to the virtual assistants themselves, or b) Clients give them access to online resources so the Virtual assistants learn on their own.
A virtual bookkeeping assistant can create invaluable financial filing and storage systems for your company that will benefit you year-round. Virtual assistants are significantly more cost-effective than an in-house bookkeeper and can provide other administrative assistant services as well.
Why Hire Virtual Latinos?
Virtual Latinos is one of the best virtual assistant companies in the world. Our assistants are all highly trained and vetted, and many are college-educated and ready to work. Most virtual assistant companies operate out of Asia or Australia. Though these companies provide low prices, it is nearly impossible to work efficiently with someone who is on the other side of the world. The time difference makes things incredibly frustrating. With Virtual Latinos, you get the best of both worlds. We provide quality assistants who can meet your needs at affordable prices, all in a time zone that operates with your schedule. When it comes to virtual assistant companies, no one can better serve the businesses of North America than Virtual Latinos.
Contact Virtual Latinos
Whether you are looking for a year-round bookkeeper or a virtual bookkeeping assistant to help you this tax season, Virtual Latinos has a match for you. Contact us today to get started.
