How To Protect Your Tax Strategy With Company Meetings
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Written by: Tom Wheelwright
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Word Count: 449 |
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 |
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A key part of every company book is the meeting minutes. The meeting minutes may be for an annual meeting, a special meeting or any other meeting.
How to Protect Your Tax Strategy with Meeting Minutes
Protecting your tax savings is an important part of an overall tax and wealth strategy. Minutes are a powerful tool when it comes to protecting your tax savings and tax strategy.
What exactly are meeting minutes?
Meeting minutes are simply a written summary of the who, what, when, where and why of a company meeting. The meeting may be an annual meeting or a special meeting for a specific topic or any other meeting.
Who should have meeting minutes?
When you think of meeting minutes as being a tool to protect your tax savings, then every company should have meeting minutes. It doesn't matter if the company is an LLC, partnership, corporation or even a sole proprietorship.
How do meeting minutes protect your tax savings?
Meeting minutes are an ideal place to document the activity in your tax strategy, such as:
Your salary Your bonus Your distributions Loans to/from your company from/to you or your other companies Investments purchased Investments sold Travel expenses Vehicle expenses Use of your home office
Just to name a few!
It's always a good business practice to have an annual meeting. It's a great time to review the past year and focus on the upcoming coming year. This falls right in line with the company approving your salary, bonus and/or distributions. Have a discussion about why the amounts are appropriate and document that in your meeting minutes.
Special meetings are more appropriate for specific issues. For example, if your company is about to purchase a new real estate property, a special meeting can be called to approve the purchase.
A meeting is the ideal time to document what the company intends to do with that real estate - will it be held long-term and rented, will it be fixed up and sold, or does the company have something else in mind?
These options have very different tax treatments which means the transaction may be scrutinized if audited. The special meeting minutes can document the company's intent. This is very helpful documentation to have if the transaction is ever audited - auditors always want to know intent.
What if your company is just you? You may be wondering how you conduct your meetings if your company is just you. While you may be the only owner, you may have employees who should participate or you can invite members of your team of advisors to participate.
Minutes are a powerful tool to protect your tax savings and tax strategy!
About the Author
It's always a good business practice to have an annual meeting. It's a great time to review the past year and focus on the upcoming coming year. www.ProVisionWealth.com
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