Small business owners: Are you keeping track of your revenue, expenses, profits?

Small business owners: Are you keeping track of your revenue, expenses, profits? Filing tax returns? Is it all just a big mess?

Sounds like a no-brainer, but an unbelievable amount of small businesses start their first few years without any idea if they're making money or not.

Some have a misconception that if they had never taken money out of their business bank account, it's not called profit and doesn't need to be reported on a tax return! Well, the IRS doesn't agree.

Save your self the headache (and expense) of having to go through years of data to finally get your books in order. If you haven't yet, do it now. It will just get harder as time goes on. Take care of any late tax filing penalties, and start being organized. Pay someone to do it, if needed.

One scary thing to keep in mind:

You might find that your business was just losing money, and may not be viable to continue with the same approaches. This doesn't mean you'll have to shut down the whole business, the organized books will point you in the right direction which individual aspects generated much revenue and which weren't. Then you can concentrate on developing that revenue-generating aspect, and hopefully turn a profit in the future.

Better late than never...Don't wait for the IRS letter to arrive!

There are special amnesty programs available for taxpayers living outside the US, so if that's you, you may qualify for exemption from penalties.