Income Tax Preparation

Cooke, Lavender, Massey, & Company, P.C., offers a full range of income tax preparation services for individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. Navigating all the complexities and details involved with tax preparation is a difficult task. We strive to ease this burden by guiding you through strategies to minimize your tax liability, maximize your cash flow, and stay on track with your personal or business financial goals. 

Our CPAs can be especially helpful in preparing income taxes for small businesses, corporations, partnerships, divorced individuals with children, and people with investment portfolios, investment properties, and other assets. 

About Our Income Tax Preparation Services

We are proud to offer decades of experience in helping clients with income tax preparation. We aim to help you achieve your financial goals while ensuring compliance with federal and state laws. 

As a new client, we begin with a consultation in which we assess previous tax returns, learn about your business, and become familiar with your current financial situation. From there, our team can make recommendations about strategies for income tax preparation and other options to improve your overall financial plan. 

Simplified avatar of a person with a round beige face, no facial features, wearing an orange shirt, set against a circular blue background.

Individual Income Tax Preparation

As an individual tax client, we will provide you our tax organizers each year to help you prepare the right documents for us.  We are available to answer any questions from clients and review any changes that may have occurred in your financial situation during the course of the year which may affect your circumstances. 

There are over a thousand IRS tax forms used to report different types of income, expenses, and other relevant financial information. Our team of experts can help identify which tax forms pertain to you, but here are a few of the common forms for an individual tax return:

  • Schedule A is used to itemize deductions like mortgage interest, property taxes, medical expenses, and charitable giving. 

  • Schedule B is used to report any taxable interest you earned or ordinary dividends (however, you are not required to report interest or dividends in tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs and 529 plans). 

  • Schedule C is used to report profits, losses, and any deductible expenses from a business.

  • Schedule D allows you to report capital gains and losses.

  • Schedule E is use to report income or losses from rental and/or pass-through entities.

A simplistic organizational chart with one top person connected to three lower people.

Business, LLC, and Non-Profit Income Tax Preparation

When your business or organization closes your books for the fiscal year, you will provide us with your relevant accounting records. Our clients can send this information via our secure online portal. Alternatively, some people prefer to bring digital or printed copies to our office. 

Some people prefer to arrange a meeting to review and discuss the significant financial events from the year. Others prefer that we reach out via phone or email if we have any specific questions during the tax preparation process. Regardless of your preference, we will make sure that your needs are addressed.

Get Peace of Mind

Income tax preparation can be a complicated process. There are many complex variables, deductions, and regulations to follow and consider. Unless you are confident in your ability to file your taxes correctly, hiring our CPAs to take care of this process can save you time, energy, and money. Just as importantly, it can give you the peace of mind of knowing that you are not inadvertently missing out on deductions or violating tax laws. 

Income Tax Frequently Asked Questions

  • Because every financial situation is unique, it’s difficult to give an accurate estimate of how much it will cost to prepare your taxes. The cost of tax preparation depends, in large part, on the organization of your records and financial statements, the complexity of your situation, and the amount of time needed to complete your return(s). Our team will discuss our fee structure with you during our initial meeting. Contact us for more information.

  • Every industry is unique, and the list of eligible deductions would be far too long to provide for each business. Rules about deductions may change from year to year. One of the benefits of having a CPA complete your income tax preparation is correctly identifying and taking advantage of as many deductions as possible. 

    For any deduction, it’s essential to have a record of the expense or reimbursement. Even though it’s inconvenient, the best practice is to go through the process of formally reimbursing yourself for any deductible expenses. For example, if you would like to deduct automobile mileage, you must keep a log and write a check to reimburse yourself for those miles so that everything is documented accurately for tax and accounting purposes.

  • If you filed your tax returns electronically, you may receive information about your tax refund within 48 hours. If you paper file your tax return, it will take significantly longer for the IRS to process the information and prepare your refund. There are tools on the IRS and State websites that can be used to track the status of your refund.

  • If you have a business or are in the process of starting a new business, it is critical to make sure you establish the correct type of business entity for your unique circumstances. Our team of experts can offer advice and guidance about choosing the right legal business entity and the type of tax return to file. Establishing the most favorable legal and tax entity can protect you from financial liability and save you money.