Phoenix Arizona CPA | Arizona Tax Accountant | Arizona Income Tax

When trying to qualify for the earned income tax credit you or your spouse must satisfy the age test if filing a joint tax return. You can not be a dependent of another taxpayer, and are not a qualifying child of another taxpayer.

If married and filing a joint tax return you must include your social security number on your IRS tax return and that of your spouse. Married couples who file separate returns are not eligible for the earned income credit. If you are married, but your spouse did not live in your home for the last six months of the year, you may be able to file as head of household and take the credit. If you are married and file a joint return, you meet this rule if at least one spouse works and has earned income. Read the rest of this entry »

An integrated understanding all of all the three components of a financial statement - Income statement, Balance sheet and a Cash flow statement is required to understand the operations of any business. The income statement reports the Profit or Loss for a period. The balance Sheet reports on the financial position of the business at any time; what the business owns and what it owes. The cash flow statement on the other hand tracks the movement of cash in the business, answering questions such as what has contributed to the cash inflows and what has contributed to the cash outflows. One should not treat all three statements as independent silos but understand the linkages between the statements. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Packard Chairmen of Hewlett-Packard said “Tell me how a person is measured and I’ll tell you how they will perform.”

Business Metrics are tailored performance measures that promote the strategic goals and objectives of the organiza­tion.

The spectrum of business measurements spans a wide variety of management methods. Traditional financial measures, such as Work in Process (WIP) and piece rates, are rapidly being replaced by time based measures, like Raw and In-Process (RIP) and rate based planning. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 30th 2002, President Bush signed and approved the Sarbanes Oxley act. Thereafter, this act has turned over the processes of the financial reporting. This article aims to make you acquainted with the policies of the Sarbanes Oxley act. In this article, you will find a Sarbanes Oxley overview.

With the implementation of this act, the Congress is now able to make certain changes to the financial reporting process in corporate world. The major changes include certification by the officers and real-time disclosure of information. This act strives to make the policies and the business of the public companies transparent and to increase the independence of the companies as well as the issuers. Read the rest of this entry »

Web based accounting has come as a great boon to all those business owners as this has simplified they whole process of maintaining and keeping records of financial transactions. The internet has made everything simple but you have to make sure that things are done properly to ensure that there are no glitches in your work. Read the rest of this entry »

A tax write off is the same thing as a tax deduction, and if you don’t know what expenses are legitimate deductions on your tax return, you won’t know what you can legitimately write off either.  In the case of tax write offs, what you don’t know can be very painful indeed.

Tax write offs are taken by business owners and are items which in normal circumstances might not be allowable deductions but become so when the situation of a business changes. Read the rest of this entry »

With expansion of internet services everything has become easier then before. Today solutions for every problem are readily available just through few mouse clicks so how your accounting problem can left unanswered. To lighten your accounting burden internet has web based accounting that can solve your accounting hassles just through few clicks. This is a clever business trick to gain more profit while investing less amount of money. Read the rest of this entry »

As a business owner, you know that there are plenty of accounting tasks and duties that you should take care of. Your accountant makes suggestions. Your banker maybe specifies particular requirements. Heck, even your bookkeeper may regularly be pointing out things you need to take care of. Here, however, rather than pointing out things you should do, I’ll point out two things that you should never do. Read the rest of this entry »

In this series of articles we will also discuss:

1. Balance Sheet Explained

2. Trading and Profit and Loss Account

3. Adjustments of Final Accounts

Previously while discussing the basic accounting equation it was noted that A - L = P, where A represents assets (property and possession) owned by the business; L represents liabilities (claims against the business of the creditors) and P represents the proprietor’s funds (equity) in the business., Read the rest of this entry »

The steps are as follows:

1. Ignore opening and dosing cash and bank balances appearing in receipts and payments account.

2. Eliminate all items of capital receipts and payments.

3. Ascertain income of the relevant year by deducting from the total receipts the income received on account of previous and future years and by adding the income accrued due in the year but not received and income received in the previous year but relating to this year. Read the rest of this entry »