Today we’re talking about the end of the year upcoming deadlines for small businesses. These are some of the things that have to get done before year end not as a business growth aspect, but as true deadlines that a business needs to be aware of when they’re coming up on the end of the year.
How to Handle Upcoming Deadlines
It’s important that all businesses and individuals meet their deadlines. If you have a due date and you miss it, you could be subject to additional penalties and interest. If you have a profit sharing pension, you could not count that for the prior year if you miss that deadline. So it’s really important to look at that.
When you make contributions, you have to allow some time for those monies to transfer from your business and personal accounts into your providers accounts or financial institution accounts. So make sure you reach out to your advisors for when you need to have that money wired or transferred in order to meet that deadline.
9/15 Deadline
The first upcoming deadline we’re going to talk about is September 15th. This is when partnership and S corporations that have extended due dates for their tax returns will be due. That’s also the due date for your third quarter personal tax estimates. If you haven’t looked at that, or haven’t been making those payments, we urge you to take a look and see if that is necessary for yourself and make that payment to avoid any penalties that may be occurring or assessed.
You also may have your delayed retirement plan contributions for the prior year due on September 15th. This includes profit sharing contributions, pension contributions, and those kinds of things for your business.
10/15 Deadline
The next upcoming deadline is October 15th. This is the deadline or if you’ve extended your individual tax return. Also, a calendar year C corporation that extended is due October 15, as well as a calendar year trust or estate.
October 15th is not just the deadline for filing a tax return. If you have any taxes due with those tax returns, you have to pay that by October 15th if you haven’t already. If there is anything due, you’ll have interest and late payment penalties because you didn’t pay enough when you filed your extension. You don’t want to get hit with additional late penalties by not paying that tax or filing that return on time.
1/15 Deadline
January 15th might fall on the new year, but it’s the deadline for filing fourth quarter estimated taxes. Getting through the year end and looking at where you’re at is important. Along with filing that last estimated quarterly payment you can start getting ready to do your tax return due in April.
Insurance and Retirement Plan Deadlines
This is the time of year to start looking at health insurance and retirement plan renewals. If you have a calendar year plan, health, dental, and life insurance will renew come January 1st and you’ll need time to decide if you’re going to stay with your current provider or switch. You’ll also need to decide on the plans themselves and give your employees time to select which will work best for them. There’s a lot of analysis that gets done and you need time to look at that.
If you don’t have a plan in place and you want to get one in place you’ve got to start now because it takes the insurance companies a while to get all the paperwork processed.
The same thing holds true for retirement plans if you’re trying to set one up for the upcoming year. What I hear from financial institutions is that they set up these retirement plans, especially more complicated ones, like 401k plans, in about 60 days. You need quite a bit of lead time to get that set up. Especially if you’re looking at a January 1 start date.
Conclusion
Now is the time to start planning your taxes, tax returns, insurance plans, and retirement plans. You need to give yourself plenty of time to evaluate your options and evaluate the institutions that you might go with. You may have to forecast and budget as well. Talk to your employees for their input.
We have a masterclass for organizing your business finances, as well as a startup business course for small business owners just getting going in their business. Make sure you get to all of your upcoming deadlines with our help!
