Tax season can be a stressful time for many entrepreneurs. Even if a team member is on top of the day-to-day bookkeeping, tax season can still sneak up on you. As a business owner, your role isn’t just about making sure the numbers add up. It’s about making sure the right strategies are in place to minimize tax exposure, maximize deductions, and keep your company aligned with long-term goals.
Effective tax planning is an ongoing, strategic process that impacts everything from cash flow to retirement planning. By taking action now, you’ll position your business for a stress-free filing season - and a stronger financial future.
In this article, you’ll learn five ways to prepare your business for tax season before the year ends, how I can help you strengthen your LIFT - Legal, Insurance, Financial & TaxⓇ systems and how coordinated professional guidance can save you time, money, and stress.
1 | Get Financial Clarity
Your team might already have the books reconciled, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready for tax season. Accurate numbers are just the start. What you really need is insight.
Ask your team or your accountant to provide executive-level summaries that go beyond simple profit-and-loss statements. You want to see key performance indicators like gross margins, year-over-year trends, and cash flow projections. These reports reveal patterns that help guide strategic decisions like timing purchases, bonuses, or owner distributions before year-end.
If you haven’t already, request a meeting among your bookkeeper, accountant, and business advisor to review your year-to-date data together. This ensures everyone is aligned, identifies potential red flags early, and allows you to take corrective action before deadlines hit.
As your LIFTed Business Advisor, I will facilitate these cross-functional reviews, translating raw data into actionable strategies that strengthen your financial systems and reduce tax-time stress.
Once you’re clear, it’s time to make sure the way you handle money supports that clarity. Clean separation between personal and business finances - and between strategy and administration - will keep your records accurate, your deductions defensible, and your stress level low.
2 | Keep Business and Personal Finances Clearly Divided
Even with a capable team managing day-to-day transactions, it’s still your responsibility to ensure your business and personal finances remain completely distinct. This separation is about far more than neat bookkeeping. It’s about credibility, compliance, and long-term protection.
As your company grows, blurred financial lines can quietly create risk. Small issues, like reimbursing personal expenses through the business account or using the same credit card for multiple entities, can trigger audit exposure, undermine liability protection, and even cost you valuable deductions. These mistakes usually stem not from carelessness, but from systems that haven’t kept up with growth.
Each entity or line of business should have its own bank accounts, credit cards, and financial controls. This structure doesn’t just make tax preparation easier - it signals professionalism to investors, lenders, and regulators. It also gives you cleaner data, allowing you to make faster, better strategic decisions based on accurate numbers.
Your team can execute the mechanics, but it’s up to you to ensure the systems they follow truly protect you. As your LIFTed Business Advisor and attorney, I will review your entity setup, compensation models, and expense frameworks to confirm your company assets and your personal assets are insulated from risk.
Once your financial boundaries are clear and your systems are protecting you, it’s time to take a step back and assess whether your overall business structure still makes sense for where your company is headed.
3 | Evaluate Whether Your Business Structure Still Fits
Your entity type, whether an LLC, S corporation, or C corporation, plays a huge role in determining your taxes, liability exposure, and cash flow. Yet most business owners rarely revisit that decision after startup.
If your business has grown significantly, your current structure may no longer be the most efficient. For instance, S corporations can reduce self-employment taxes, while C corporations can unlock deductions unavailable to other entities. On the other hand, if you’ve expanded into new markets, added partners, or changed ownership, your existing structure could now be working against you.
This is where strategy meets timing. Discussing potential entity changes in the fall gives you time to adjust payroll, distributions, or filings before year-end, maximizing impact and minimizing disruption.
As your LIFTed Business Advisor™, I will evaluate your entity structure to determine whether your current structure best supports your overall goals, financially, legally, and personally. If not, I will help you make the legal changes needed to support your business now and in the future. I’ll also work with your accountant to ensure your tax strategy aligns with your legal structure.
Once you’re confident your structure is solid, the next focus is optimizing how you use it—specifically, how to make smart year-end moves that turn tax obligations into opportunities.
4 | Use Year-End Planning to Maximize Deductions and Future Flexibility
Your team can record the numbers, but only you can decide where and when to invest for maximum impact. The final months of the year are your best opportunity to influence your tax outcome before the clock runs out.
If you’ve had a strong year, consider investing in new equipment, vehicles, or software before December 31. Section 179 deductions may allow you to write off those purchases immediately instead of depreciating them over time.
You can also use year-end planning to fund your own future. Contributing to a SEP IRA or 401(k) reduces taxable income while building long-term security. Even better, these contributions demonstrate financial leadership to your team, showing that you prioritize sustainability alongside success.
This is also the time to align tax planning with your broader financial and insurance strategy. Are your policies, reserves, and coverage levels still appropriate for your current risk profile? As your LIFTed Business Advisor, I will review your insurance systems to ensure they support your long-term plan, not just this year’s bottom line.
While year-end decisions can make a measurable difference, true optimization requires the right team, and just as importantly, communication among them.
5 | Build Your Professional Dream Team
Even the most capable accounting and finance teams operate in silos unless someone ensures they’re working toward a unified goal. That’s where I come in.
As your LIFTed Business Advisor and attorney, I connect the dots and will build a dream team including me as your trusted advisor, as well as your accountant, insurance professional, and financial advisor. This collaboration prevents costly missteps, such as tax strategies that conflict with liability protections or insurance coverage gaps that undermine financial security.
Together, we’ll ensure all four of your LIFT systems work in harmony. Here’s what it looks like:
Legal: Your entity, contracts, and partnerships protect your assets and interests.
Insurance: Coverage matches your business’s growth and risk exposure.
Financial: Your systems produce reliable, actionable insights.
Tax: You’re not overpaying or missing legitimate deductions.
When your team communicates through a shared strategy, you transform tax season from a reactive chore into a proactive, year-round advantage. Your business becomes more than compliant. It becomes agile, resilient, and strategically positioned for success.
Take the Next Step to Strengthen Your LIFT - Legal, Insurance, Financial & Tax Systems
Tax season shouldn’t be an annual scramble or cause of great stress. It should be the natural outcome of systems that already work.
As your trusted LIFTed Business Advisor and attorney, I’ll help you align your foundational LIFT systems and manage your dream team so everyone understands your business and all your systems work together in harmony. With my support, we’ll make sure your plan doesn’t just prepare you for April 15. It propels your business forward all year long.
Schedule your LIFT Business Breakthrough™ Session today to identify gaps, uncover opportunities, and put a proactive strategy in place before the year ends.
Schedule your complimentary 15-minute discovery call to get started today.
This article is a service of a Personal Family Lawyer® Firm and LIFTed Advisors® Attorney. I offer a complete spectrum of legal services for businesses and can help you make the wisest choices with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. I also offer a LIFT Business Breakthrough Session, which includes a review of all the legal, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Call us today to schedule.
The content is sourced from Personal Family Lawyer® for use by Personal Family Lawyer firms, a source believed to be providing accurate information. This material was created for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as ERISA, tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are seeking legal advice specific to your needs, such advice services must be obtained on your own separate from this educational material.
We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.