Is Your Accountant Actually Doing Tax Planning, Or Just Reporting What You Owe?
August 25, 2026
This issue is all about tax planning: what it actually means, why we’ve spent the last three years building out our version of tax planning at Evolved Finance, and why business owners (including us) still struggle to see the blind spots in their own businesses.
Unsolicited Business Advice
Answers to real questions about bookkeeping, taxes, and running a small business.
What’s the Difference Between Meeting With Your Accountant and Actual Tax Planning?
A new client came to us recently after meeting with his old accountant every single quarter for a couple of years, but he was still getting no real tax savings. When we showed him an estimate of what we could save him, his first question was simple: what are you doing that my accountant isn’t?
Meeting quarterly to review what you might owe in taxes for the year can be helpful, but that’s only a small component of tax planning. A real tax plan is a collection of strategies, built specifically for your business, that get implemented to lower what you owe in a significant way. This is why tax planning is such a no-brainer. The ROI can be very predictable if your tax team knows what they’re doing.
It’s important to note that tax planning becomes more valuable the more profitable your business becomes (or the more money your household generates in income from any source). That said, if cash flow is already tight in your business, an improperly executed tax plan could actually hurt your cash flow even more, which is why it’s so important that your tax advisor takes the time to understand your full financial picture before making any recommendations.
Ultimately, if your accountant can tell you what you’ll owe but can’t point to specific strategies they’re implementing to reduce it, you’re paying for reporting, not planning.
Under the Hood
What we’re building, learning, and improving behind the scenes at Evolved Finance.
Building a Tax Practice From Scratch, Three Years Into It
For over a decade, Evolved Finance was known as a bookkeeping firm. We built our reputation around delivering the best bookkeeping experience for online business owners in the industry. Three years ago, we asked our clients what they wanted next from us, and the overwhelming response was that they wanted tax support. We knew we didn’t want to just do tax preparation, so Corey (our founder and managing partner) became a certified tax advisor so he could do tax planning for our clients.
Launching the tax branch of the firm was not an easy task. Tax is sensitive, technical, and unforgiving of mistakes, and building a team around it that’s as systematized, organized, and proactive as our bookkeeping team took longer than we wanted it to. That said, it’s been 100% worth it (our clients would agree as well).
As we move out of the 2026 mid-year review tax planning season with our clients, the tax team has been focused on improving our processes and onboarding new clients. While bookkeeping has been our bread and butter for many years, the tax department is quickly growing as word gets out about our relationship-based approach to accounting that saves our clients thousands on their tax bills. I have a feeling we’ll be making new hiring decisions sooner rather than later.
The Pulse
Shared insights and learnings from my conversations with clients.
More Business Owners Are Struggling to See the Opportunity Right in Front of Them
I’ve been coaching clients one-on-one and in groups for twelve years now, and something has stood out to me over the last three to six months: it’s incredibly hard to see the opportunities staring you in the face in your own business.
Given how much the economy, technology, and consumer behaviors have changed in the past three to five years, seeing those opportunities has been challenging for a lot of business owners, especially if they already had a lot of success with their old strategies and operating methods.
The clients I’ve worked with directly recently have had some pretty awesome breakthroughs. It always amazes me how obvious it is for me to see the opportunities in their businesses despite being an outsider. The minutiae of their day-to-day management of the business can make it so hard for them to pull themselves back far enough to see where the opportunities to improve their businesses really live.
The ability to understand what to focus on in your business is a skill that takes time to develop. You can develop that skill a lot faster by learning from an advisor you trust.
If any of this, tax planning, cash flow, or just getting a clearer read on your own business, sounds like something you’re navigating right now, that’s exactly what we do. Reach out and let’s talk about what a real tax strategy could look like for you.
