taxation

Now that tax time is here, I have just discovered attorney Daly's "Tax Savvy" self-help book. It answers, or helps to answer, most of my tax questions and offers useful practical advice. It is well-organized, with topics easy to find and read, without any confusing legalese.

This guide is different from the many tax guides out there from big names like Ernst & Young, etc. because it is more focussed on small businesses and you get the most relevant information in the most concise fashion. There in lies the limitation of this great book. You may have to refer to the other tax guides if your particular situation is too unique.

But the conciseness and focussed approach was extremely helpful in clarifying a lot of points for me. I had tried reading several of the bigger guides (with three times as many pages as this book) and gotten confused because it was too much information. So when I saw the Nolo guide, I was pleasantly surprised that every topic in the book was relevant to me as a small business owner! It was perfect for my needs. I now started understanding the very same topics I had so much difficulty following in the other books. For example - I was trying to research the differences between S Corporations and LLCs. When I opened this Nolo guide, I went straight to the chapter on LLCs and read the section - Comparing LLCs with Other Entities. In one sentence I knew the difference between these two entities! According to the book, the basic difference being that you can allocate income and expenses disproportionately (to share ownership) in an LLC but not in a S Corporation! Wow! I liked the speed with which I could find this critical piece of information I was researching.

The book is divided into 6 parts - The Basics (Business Income and Tax Deductible Expenses, Recordkeeping and Accounting, etc.), The Form of Your Business (Sole Proprietorships, Partnerships, S Corporations, etc.), Thinking Small (Family Businesses, Microbusinesses and Home-Based Businesses), Fringe Benefits (Retirement Plans etc.), Buying or Selling a Business, and Dealing with the IRS. There isn't a single page that is irrelevant.

If you have very advanced questions, you are better off looking through a bigger book but you would benefit tremendously by reading this book first. It will give you a firm grounding in the basics across the board. Good luck!

I am fan of the nolo.com website and I am a bigger fan of the Nolo Books. We started our software company as and LLC and turned it into a corporation a couple of years ago. I didn't buy this book before that point, but wish I did. Either way it is great that I have the book now. The book is well organized and I read through it cover to cover originaly. Tax Savvy now sits on my desk and I can use it as a quick reference. I am the kind of person that likes to know the "what, how and why" before I talk to our accountants or our lawyers, and this book enables me to do that. Bottom line... a must have