Tax Planning & Preparation
Filing the return is the easy half. The valuable half is the conversation about what the numbers mean and what to change before the next one.
The core idea
A return looks backwards. Planning looks forwards.
Most people meet their accountant once a year, in March or April, and hand over a box. The accountant records what happened and produces a number. Nothing about that process can change the number, because every decision that produced it was made months earlier.
That is not a criticism of preparation. The return has to be right, and getting it right is skilled work. It is a point about timing. If the only conversation you have with your CPA happens after the year has closed, you are paying for bookkeeping of the past and getting no help with the future.
What the forward-looking half actually involves
- A mid-year projection. Around the third quarter we take your real numbers to date and project the year. That tells us whether your estimated payments are on track and whether you are heading into a bracket or a phase-out you did not expect.
- Timing decisions. Whether an expense, a purchase or a distribution lands in this tax year or the next one is often a genuine choice, and it is often worth real money.
- Entity and payroll structure. How you are set up determines how the same profit is taxed. It is worth re-examining as the business changes, not just when you form it.
- A call before you commit. Selling a property, taking on a partner, buying out a partner, large equipment. Ten minutes before you sign is worth more than an hour afterwards.
Pennsylvania makes one part of this simpler than most states: personal income tax is a flat 3.07%, with no brackets. Planning here is less about bracket management and more about federal exposure, entity choice, self-employment tax, and multi-state apportionment.
Source: PA Department of Revenue, Personal Income Tax Rates. The 3.07% rate applies to individuals, estates, trusts, partnerships, S corporations and LLCs not taxed federally as corporations, and is unchanged for 2026. Checked 26 July 2026.
What we prepare
Returns we handle
Accurate and on time is the floor, not the service. What you are paying for is the person who can tell you what the return means.
Individual: Form 1040
Including self-employment, rental property, investment income, and equity compensation.
Partnership: Form 1065
Partnership returns with K-1s to each partner, coordinated with the books.
S-Corporation: Form 1120-S
S-corp returns, with the payroll and reasonable-compensation question handled properly rather than ignored.
C-Corporation: Form 1120
Corporate returns, including the estimated payment schedule.
Pennsylvania and local
PA-40 plus the local earned income tax filings Delaware County residents still have to make.
Multi-state
Apportionment and the separate return each state requires when income, property or payroll crosses a line.
A firm specialty
Foreign accounts, foreign income, and the reporting nobody warns you about
This is where we see the most expensive surprises, and almost always from people who were not trying to hide anything. They inherited an account overseas, or kept one open after moving to the U.S., or their employer is foreign. The tax owed is often small. The penalty for not reporting is not.
FBAR: FinCEN Form 114
If the combined maximum value of all your foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any time during the calendar year, you must file. Three details trip people up. It is an aggregate across all accounts, not per account. It uses the highest balance during the year, not the closing balance. And it applies to accounts you merely have signature authority over, not only ones you own.
The FBAR is filed with FinCEN, separately from your tax return. It is due 15 April, with an automatic extension to 15 October that requires no request and no form.
The rest of the picture
- FATCA, Form 8938. A separate filing with different thresholds. Filing an FBAR does not satisfy it, and vice versa.
- Foreign trusts, Forms 3520 and 3520-A. Frequently missed where a family trust sits abroad.
- Expat returns. U.S. citizens are taxed on worldwide income wherever they live, with credits and exclusions that have to be claimed correctly rather than assumed.
If any of this sounds like it might apply to you and you have not been filing, say so early. There are established procedures for coming into compliance, and they are considerably less painful than being found.
Source: IRS, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR). Checked 26 July 2026. Thresholds and deadlines change; confirm your own position before relying on these figures.
People who want more than a filed return
Business owners whose entity structure has not been looked at since the day it was formed. Individuals with rental property, investments or equity compensation that make the return more than a W-2 exercise. Anyone with money, income or family across a border.
And anyone who has had the experience of asking their accountant a question in August and not hearing back.
Pricing
What it costs
Every engagement is quoted before work starts, never after. Individual and business returns are priced on complexity; international, multi-state and estate returns are scoped first. The initial conversation is free, and if what you need is simpler than you feared we will say so.
Frequently asked questions
Questions we get asked most
Preparation is a record of what already happened. By the time we are filling in a 2026 return, every decision that affects it was made in 2026 and cannot be changed. Planning happens while those decisions are still open: before you sell the property, before you buy the equipment, before you change the entity. The return is the receipt. Planning is the shopping.
The useful window is roughly July to December. By then you have most of a year of real numbers, so a projection means something, and there is still time to act on it: to adjust estimated payments, time a purchase into this year or push it into next, or fix a payroll setup. In February the year is already written.
If the combined value of all your foreign financial accounts topped $10,000 at any point during the calendar year, yes. That is an aggregate test across every account, and it is a high-water mark, not a year-end balance: if the total touched $10,001 for one day, the requirement is triggered. The report is FinCEN Form 114, the FBAR, and it is separate from your tax return. It is due 15 April with an automatic extension to 15 October that you do not have to request. Penalties for missing it are severe, which is why we ask every new client about it.
Get in touch
Ready to work with a CPA who picks up the phone?
Business owners, executors, and individuals across Delaware County work with us because the CPA who quotes the job is the CPA who does it. The first conversation is free.
Schedule a free consultationPrefer to talk now? Call (484) 339-4616