Hello and thank you for your question.
Bookkeeper
Your 'books' reside on your premises. Since a bookkeeper keeps the
books, he or she is usually an employee of yours, possibly on a
part-time basis. If your operation is so small that you can't afford
to hire a bookkeeper, then possibly your accountant has a staff person
who can come by every week or two to update the books from your
receipts, or you can make entries as you go on a product like
QuickBooks.
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/
Accountant
Most accountants are C.P.A.'s, which certifies them to render
financial statements that owners, banks and the public can rely on.
Typically you would submit your books (see above) to your accountant,
either monthly, quarterly or once a year depending on your scale of
business. Your accountant would then produce monthly, quarterly or
annual financial statements (balance sheet and profit/loss statement)
and would help with your estimated tax payments and annual tax return
preparation.
Tax planner
Not really a formal designation, but many accountants will give useful
tax advice based on what they see. For example they might recommend
that you form an LLC or incorporate as a sub-S corporation, establish
a pension plan, etc., and they should be sensitive to issues such as
whether your payroll withholding is being handled properly, whether
you're keeping adequate records, whether you have suitable medical and
life insurance and the like.
Financial planner/advisor
Most financial planners have a product to sell, namely brokerage and
investment services and/or life insurance and are happy to advise you
along these lines for free. Because of the obvious potential for
abuse, there are also financial planners who are fee-based, i.e. they
charge by the hour and do not accept commissions on your securities
and life insurance purchases.
http://invest-faq.com/articles/fplan-choose-planner.html
Tax attorney
These provide a variety of services, depending on your situation.
If you're in a civil or criminal audit, or if you owe back taxes, they
can deal with the IRS on your behalf, or they can work in the
background in support of your accountant (often the IRS is more
comfortable if the accountant who prepared the return defends it
rather than an outside attorney).
They're also a good choice to draft your will and living trust, since
they're sensitive to the tax attributes of estate plans.
If you're wealthy (at least a couple of million dollars) they'll have
more sophisticated tax proposals, including charitable planning,
pension proposals that your accountant may not have considered, sub-S
and LLC plans, again using your accountant's work as a starting point,
etc.
Search terms used:
Quickenbooks
fee-based financial planner
Please excuse the sparse number of Google research cites in the above
note. This is an area that I'm familiar with and I was able to write
this ex tempore.
If you would like citations to particular concerns or issues, please
Request Clarification and I'll be happy to provide them. I would
appreciate it if you would hold off on rating my answer until I have a
chance to respond.
Sincerely,
Google Answers Researcher
Richard-ga |
