Taxes, ###### if you do,

###### if you don't?

So my accountant calls me today with the amount I owe the IRS for last year, yeah, it's a lot. Between getting divorced and having to file 2015 as single, even though I was married for 46 weeks threw a lot of tax burden on me.

But aside from that, I did buy new trailers last year, but made what I thought was a great deal on the new ones, and sold the old ones for a decent number, of course they were all depreciated out so all of that money is seen as profit.

On top of that I decided to keep my trucks for another year, so no other write offs to speak of, (large number write offs, not nickel and dime stuff) So of course the accountant tells me what I already know, I should buy newer equipment for more write offs.

But I just hate to jump into a huge note as I am still not confident in this economy, so buy new equipment every year and carry a large note that if things get bad you may not recover.

Or, hold your cards close to the vest, keep your equipment in good shape, keep up on money saving technology, strive for low operations cost and high fuel mileage, make smart business deals and pay through the nose on taxes, so even after all these years of surviving what am I missing?

Of course the accountant says, well if you didn't make any money, you wouldn't be paying taxes, be happy???

It just seems like the small business owner gets hammered no matter what, I'm not crying as much as I am wondering how the rest of you are handling this? Vacation home set up as satellite office, off shore account, trust fund???

Thanks for listening, all comments welcome.

Stan

 

The other issue that we have run into is this, a LOT of the added income from last year was simply fuel being 2.00 a gal. or less instead of 4.00 a gal. or more, so if you DON'T understand that and think you are making a killing, go out and buy new equipment, and your loan payments go up, your interest payment goes up, and your accessible emergency funds go down, then what happens IF/WHEN fuel goes back up again?

I think we can ALL remember how many carriers went out of business when fuel jumped from 2.00 to 5.00 last time, and the companies it didn't put out of business it sure made nervous, me included!!!