Tax Planning And Management

Tax planning and tax return preparation are often the starting point of our relationship with a client, but then we demonstrate the Advocate part of our company name. By looking at your taxes not simply as a year end task, but rather as an individualized, ongoing, holistic program, you end up with a minimized tax burdens, and maximized profits! Whether you file as an individual, partnership, or corporation (a decision we can help you make), we’ll guide you to solutions that are compatible with your individual style and business needs, MORE

• Since we’re always keeping track of the ever changing Internal Revenue Codes, we’re your expert advocate with the IRS, Tax planning covers:
• Taking advantage of all available tax incentives and credits
• Discovering deductions you may have previously overlooked
• Finding deferred compensation opportunities
• Restructuring your activities to minimize multi-state tax bites
• Compliance with all regulations
• Going beyond just your business, and also covering your investments, family and individual returns, estates and trusts
• Pointing you to proper estate, retirement, and succession tax planning

Strategic Planning

As the advocates for your entrepreneurial plan or vision, our first task is often to make sure you’ve put it into writing, and to help you do so. Preparing a strategic business plan energizes your team to work through issues and produce a common vision and road-map. Our contributions to the plan are recommendations for improving profitability and performance, and the development of systems to get you where you need to go. MORE

Strategic planning is not a standalone activity, it must be coupled with a full understanding of the financial risks and rewards. Advocate goes beyond analysis of current company financial performance, extending our analysis to projections and “what if” scenarios for planning and decision-making. That’s the kind of planning that moves companies from the Fortune 1000 to the Fortune 500 – and that can help you move into the Fortune 1000 if that’s your goal!

Business Structure And Management Advisory Services

Virtually every important business decision contains a financial component, Advocate’s consulting and management advisory services may start when someone forms a business, or acquires a business, and then eventually disposes of it! The first decision is typically whether to operate as an individual proprietorship, a partnership, or as some form of corporation. (Click here to see the advantages of various forms of corporations.)

Along the way come financial institution filings with regulatory agencies, product costing issues, and the ongoing need to look at numbers and see trends, or to look at trends and translate them into numbers. Whether it’s writing your business plan, guiding a business acquisition, reorganization, sale or merger, we’re at your side. We’re not just number-crunchers – we’re business counselors and strategic advisors on looking behind the numbers. Fortune 500 insights – to help you make and secure your own fortune!.

Compensation Planning

How much are you going to pay yourself? And the members of your team? Are you prepared to respond to employee inquiries about payroll issues? Advocate can help you plan your own take-home so as to meet your personal needs, minimize taxes, and maintain appropriate levels and ratios to motivate not only your performance but that of the others on whom your business depends.

Financial Analysis

Our thorough approach, customized for each client, gives you an individualized plan and analysis to grow your business and capital, not only through your direct operations, but also by utilizing investments, income tax planning, gifting strategies, insurance planning, retirement, and estate planning. Advocate works closely with your attorney and investment advisors to coordinate all aspects of financial planning. While we review your portfolio strategies, liquidity, and types of investments, we do not recommend individual instruments nor offer brokerage or other commissioned services. MORE

• Investment Planning
• Cash Flow Projections
• Funding College Education
• Income Tax Planning
• Retirement Planning
• Insurance Analysis
• Estate Planning
• Charitable Giving Strategies
• Budgeting
• Family Wealth Transfers
• Statements
• P & L reports

Business Valuations

What’s your business worth? There are lots of reasons you need to know this, but none more important than those that relate to your exit strategy. Whether you’re going to sell to a stranger, pass the company along to your children, enter a buy-sell agreement with a partner, offer a partnership to a key employee, or any of dozens of other contingencies, you need an objective analysis of what the business is worth to you, or might be worth to someone else. Advocate looks at all the visible and invisible assets, to help you arrive at a realistic figure that is critical to your over-all understanding of where you are and where you need to be when it’s time to get out. Learn More

Staff Training

The Advocate philosophy is based on helping you focus on your own skills and expertise, and letting specialists deal with the extraneous. (As we often say, there’s no point doing superbly well that which you shouldn’t be doing at all.) But our job also encompasses recognizing when the volume level of a given outsourced activity grows to where it’s more cost-efficient to do it in house. We’ll not only help you diagnose the situation, but also recruit the best possible employee for you, and train that employee to perform at the level your success requires.