What should I submit to my accountant for this tax season?

Welcome to this year’s tax season. To make sure that tax season is less taxing, it is important you be proactive. Make sure you have your documents and financial statements in order by now to beat the April 17, 2023 deadline for the annual income tax return. So we should ask the question, What should I submit to my accountant for this tax season?

If you have a business or own a business, be it a partnership or a corporation, you will prepare your business tax returns first and then you report the income from that on your personal tax return. If you are a sole proprietorship, you file directly your business income in your personal return. If you are a mixed income earner, that is, you both earn compensation and business income, you file directly your business income and compensation income in your personal return. 

Here are the things that you should prepare and submit to your accountant, complete your bookkeeping and wrap up 2022. Your accountant needs to generate an income statement, also known as a profit and loss along with the balance sheet. Both these FS are what your accountant needs to prepare your tax return.

Documents that you need to gather are registration documents, prior year tax returns and financial statements, last year’s receipts, bank statements, loan documents, asset purchases or sales and any taxes withheld by you or withheld from you by your clients or customers. If you will opt for itemized deductions, submit all relevant receipts and invoices from your vendors to your accountant as well.

Registration documents include your certificate of registration from DTI or SEC, and BIR. For SEC registered businesses, send also your Articles of Incorporation or Partnership. Prior year tax returns and financial statements give a background on the nature of your business and will be most helpful if you have a new accountant who will be preparing your tax returns for you.

Gather your official receipts, invoices, delivery receipts and file them properly as support documents for the income declarations in your financial statements. If possible, take pictures of all your receipts and file them digitally using google drive or your harddrive. Make sure your receipts are filled out properly in terms of date, payee, address,, transaction particulars amount received and TIN and output VAT for VAT details. 

Bank statements should be filed properly should you need to go back to it to review certain transactions. If you use digital banking, download the bank statements for the whole year and file them digitally so you can access them anytime should you need to reconcile some transactions.

Loan documents and loan balances. The loans on your balance sheet must match the records of the lender. Make sure that interest is separate from the principal as the interest will show up in your income statement as an expense. The principal balance will be reflected in your balance sheet.

The next item to submit to your accountant are the assets purchased or sold. Inform your accountant of any major asset purchase during the year and if any of the assets recorded before should be removed from the balance sheet asset totals.

For any taxes withheld by you from payments made to your employees and vendors, you have to send certificates of tax withheld to each particular employee and vendor. Submit the summary list of these taxes withheld to your accountant. As for taxes withheld from you by your clients or customers, ask these clients/customers to send you the certificates of tax withheld so you can submit these to your accountant. These will reduce your tax liability as these taxes withheld from you are considered advance tax payments on your end.

Complete your documents in one envelope or box or digital drive for digital copies when sending these to your accountant. Do not send your documents on a staggered basis as this could result in some documents being missed or lost. One good practice in this digital times is to have a dedicated google drive folder that you will share with your accountant. Upload all your tax related documents and notify your accountant of any changes in the shared digital folder. Keep  an organized digital system to make this tax season stress free by giving your accountant more time to prepare your tax returns and you the time to focus more on your business.