The importance of tax planning has already been discussed at length . The corporate tax to be filed should reflect tax and accounting policies planned and continuously implemented by the company to optimize the tax bill.
However, today, many companies continue without planning their taxes and wait until December, January of the following year, or even until filing their tax return in July, to make decisions - often crude and with the risk of tax penalties - to reduce their payment.
For those companies that do not have tax planning policies incorporated into their daily philosophy, the advice is to make decisions as early as possible . December 31 is just around australia phone number for whatsapp the corner and there are still things that can be done to pay less taxes without incurring risks. Let's see.
Reducing taxes through accounting practices
-Record expenses on the accrual date . It is common practice for many companies to wait to receive the invoice from suppliers and creditors for materials and services received in order to record it. Based on the accrual principle, a basic principle provided for in the General Accounting Plan , the appropriate accounting policy, which will result in having all expenses recorded on December 31, is to record expenses when they occur, regardless of whether the invoice is available and whether or not it has been paid, with credit to invoices pending receipt.
An obvious example of this is the case of extra payments to employees. Every month, along with the monthly salary of the workers, the extra payments are accrued. The most common thing in companies is to record the monthly payroll without recording the right to receive, for each employee, the aforementioned payments. All these payments, accrued and unpaid, represent an expense that must be recorded in the accounts . As with the invoices pending receipt, to the extent that they are expenses accrued in the year, they are tax deductible. The same occurs with other payments provided for in some collective agreements and even with vacations.
- Income or advances? In some business activities, with projects or products, with a manufacturing or completion period lasting more than one year, collections are made before the delivery of the product or completion of the service to the customer . It is very common for companies to record, for accounting and tax purposes, this collection as income. However, it is very possible that they can be considered as advances instead of income for the year.
-Depreciation of fixed assets. It is very important to ensure that fixed assets are being depreciated at the maximum coefficients permitted by tax regulations. It is also worth remembering that used items can be depreciated at double the rate.
- Sales rebates . It is common to grant major customers price discounts for quantities of products purchased. Often, these discounts, although related to the year's sales, are not paid until well into the following year. These rebates, by application of the accrual principle, must be recorded with each sale , reducing the accounting and tax revenues for the year.