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Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Every January, the same scene plays out at kitchen tables and back-office desks across the country. You scroll through a year of checks, Venmo payments, and bank transfers, trying to remember who you paid, how much, and whether you ever got a W-9 from them. The deadline is days away, and the one person you need to reach has stopped answering his phone. If that sounds familiar, there is some good news. Starting with payment

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Your sales look about the same as last year. Maybe they are even up a little. So why does it feel like there is less money in the bank at the end of every month? For a lot of small business owners right now, the answer is that costs have been quietly climbing on every side. Materials, insurance, wages, rent, freight, software subscriptions. Each increase seems small on its own. Together, they eat into a margin that was nev

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Most business owners we talk to have the same reaction when an IRS envelope shows up: a knot in the stomach, a quick mental scan of every deadline from the last year, and then the envelope sits on the counter for a few days because nobody wants to open it. So when the IRS announced this summer that it would start forgiving certain penalties automatically, without a phone call or a letter from you, it sounded like nothing b

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Every business owner we know has a version of the same list. The things you're going to get to. Not urgent, not forgotten, just always sitting one week out. Most of that list is forgiving. It waits for you. This particular list isn't. Everything below has a hard stop at midnight on December 31, and after that it's simply not available to you for 2026, no matter how good your reason is, no matter who your accountant is, no

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Most business owners choose their entity type once, years ago, at a kitchen table or in an attorney's office, and never think about it again. Then a tax payment slips. A letter shows up. And suddenly the question that matters most is one nobody ever explained: is this the business's debt, or is it mine? We have that conversation with owners every week. The answer depends almost entirely on how your business is set up and o

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Sales tax problems rarely start with a dramatic letter. More often, they begin quietly — a missed filing, a misunderstood rule, a product or service you didn’t realize was taxable, or a period where the business was growing faster than the bookkeeping could keep up. Then one day, a notice arrives from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR), and suddenly “back sales tax” becomes very real. If you’re a Wisconsin business

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 ext. 801 When a Wisconsin business owner calls us after opening a WI Department of Revenue (DOR) collection notice, the first thing they usually say is, “I thought this was an IRS problem.” It’s a natural assumption. Most people think “tax debt” means federal tax debt. But Wisconsin has its own collection system, its own rules, and its own enforcement tools — and they are not the same as the IRS. If you received a notice from the W

If you have spent any time on Facebook or TikTok lately, or opened one of those emails with a subject line in all capital letters, you have probably seen the posts. The IRS Fresh Start Program is accepting applications. New IRS program wipes out back taxes. Apply before the deadline closes. Our clients bring them to us almost every week, usually with the same question attached: is this real, and did I miss it? So let us clear a few things up, because most of what is circulati

A straight conversation for Wisconsin small business owners who owe taxes I have had this conversation more times than I would like to count, and it almost always starts the same way. The owner sits down, looks at the floor for a second, and says some version of, “I feel really dumb about this.” Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 Ext. 801 Here is how it usually happened. An IRS notice showed up. Maybe payroll taxes got behind during a slow stretch, or a couple of

You open QuickBooks to check one number, and forty minutes later you are still in there — chasing a balance that doesn't look right, wondering when the last reconciliation actually happened, and quietly deciding to deal with it later. I see the same handful of problems every single month. Not because business owners are careless, but because QuickBooks lets you keep working while things quietly go sideways. Here are the ten we clean up most often, and what you can do about ea

You carry more than anyone around you ever sees. You sign the checks, you keep the lights on, and you make sure your people get paid even in the months when the math is tight. Payroll runs, the software does its calculating, your bookkeeper files what needs filing, and payroll taxes become one more line on a long list you assume is handled. Here is what most owners don't learn until the letter arrives: the money withheld from your employees' paychecks was never yours. You are

You know the envelope. It shows up with the IRS return address, and before you even open it, your stomach drops a little. Maybe you set it on the corner of the kitchen table, told yourself you would deal with it after the busy stretch, and then another one came. Now you check the bank balance on Friday morning and wonder whether payroll clears if the IRS decides to move first. I have sat across from a lot of business owners in that exact spot. Contractors. Restaurant owners

For more than 20 years, one of the most useful IRS penalty relief options came with a practical problem: taxpayers had to know it existed before they could use it. That is changing. On July 8, 2026, the IRS announced in IR-2026-83 that it is phasing out First Time Abate and replacing it with Automatic Exemption from Penalty, or AEP. The new system keeps the core eligibility standard largely the same, but changes how relief is applied. Under First Time Abate, taxpayers usually

Business Advisory Services, LLC 608-831-4900 ext. 801 If you have unfiled 941 payroll tax returns, the failure-to-file penalty is 5% per month - ten times the 0.5% failure-to-pay penalty. Filing a return you can't pay is always cheaper than not filing at all. And if you don't file, the IRS is authorized under Section 6020(b) to prepare a substitute 941 for you, estimate the tax from wage data it already has, and begin collecting on its own numbers. The Math Nobody Explains

Falling behind on your payroll taxes, especially Form 941, can feel overwhelming. Many business owners worry about what the IRS might do next and how serious the consequences could be. The good news is that while the IRS has clear steps it can take, the situation is manageable and you can take action to stop the problem before it grows. This post explains what happens when you are behind on 941 payroll taxes, the real consequences you might face, and how to move forward with