Los Angeles Very Small Business Taxes

December 18, 2013 3:55 PM

I have a very, very small business (a blog; it gets decent traffic and I made some money advertising). I have some questions, and I'd like to speak to a tax professional or attorney for probably less than 30 minutes. I'm in Los Angeles, CA. Can you recommend someone and give me a ballpark cost?

Questions I have include whether certain items can be deducted as an expense, whether I need to file a DBA ("doing business as"), and other similar questions which will probably be quite easy for someone with experience to answer. I don't want to hire someone to do my taxes, I just want advice so I can do my own taxes.

If you need to know the business's approximate income this year I can tell you over memail.

Thanks!

posted by insectosaurus to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Best answer: No rec but make sure you file your LA city business tax forms. You don't owe tax if your business made under 100k but if you don't file the form they will go after you for the full tax amount.
posted by hamsterdam at 4:29 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Honestly, at a certain level of small, the stuff Turbotax or something will walk you through is usually pretty decent. I mean, "doing things right" really means a CPA. Really, really means a CPA. Cheaping out is... well, there's a lot of incompetent people in the business, but that's because it's complicated. Personal taxes, I'm all for people doing themselves. If you're looking to make a living off this at some point, it might be worth taking it seriously enough to get it done properly from the beginning. But this is not a place to chase the best deals in terms of cost, there are some exceptions but mostly the cheapest people in town are also the least competent.

That also means that the people most likely to be willing to just give you half an hour of time to try to make a buck wherever they can are also not very likely to be competent. A lot of CPAs are going to be hesitant to give you specific advice without actually doing the tax return because they don't want to wind up liable if you do it wrong.

(Having occupied an intersection of the legal world and the accounting world, save tax attorneys for when you're in serious trouble with the IRS, if you just want tax advice you want a CPA.)
posted by Sequence at 7:05 PM on December 18, 2013

Check your memail.
posted by vignettist at 12:05 PM on December 19, 2013