Sales Tax Overpayment Recovery
Baker, Shore & DiLorenzo's professionals either come to your premises or if possible, remotely review your accounts payable records and sales tax returns. After finding overpayments, we prepare all of the necessary documentation to submit a refund application and handle all correspondence required. Our auditors do not use your staff to do any of their work. We obtain your approval of any refund application we file and uphold the highest standard of confidentiality. Our work is on a contingency fee basis, payable only when you receive your refund. There is no charge for our time or expenses. We do not charge for future savings.
Other benefits include:
- Our auditors will be happy to answer any sales tax questions you may have while on site or anytime thereafter.
- Consultation on, and often reduction of current or closed audits (if applicable).
- Suggestions on streamlining your sales tax processes.
- Identification of vendors where it would be worthwhile for you to provide blanket exemption certificates.
- A 50% discount on the price of our customized seminar, after we have completed our sales tax overpayment recovery service.
Franchise Tax Reductions
Franchise tax is an often overlooked avenue of savings for almost all businesses, and for good reason. The franchise tax accounting required by New York State is mostly iron clad with little room for reduction. Most of the time, a company will simply make a habit of paying whatever the state says they should to avoid any penalties or fees.
New York has done a great job of making sure all business pay the absolute maximum in franchise tax each year, however, there are still a few ways to reduce this tax and even recover overpayments. Our experts know exactly what transactions and situations to look for to reduce and recover this seemingly inescapable cost.
Utility Studies
Some businesses qualify for a partial or complete sales tax exemption based on the individual way they use electricity, gas, or other utilities. In order to take advantage of this exemption, state tax departments require businesses to submit a utility study. You may have qualified engineers on staff, but Baker, Shore & DiLorenzo's staff, with its sales tax knowledge in addition to its technical expertise, is uniquely qualified to analyze and prepare the required study.
Customized Seminars
In the often confusing world of sales tax, knowledge is essential. Unknown tax liabilities can cost your company thousands of dollars in interest and penalties. Overpayment of tax is simply wasted money - lost dollars due to lack of sufficient tax knowledge or procedures. Baker, Shore & DiLorenzo's customized seminar will empower your accounting team with the knowledge necessary to be more tax compliant, saving your company money.
How do we customize a seminar for you?
When we conduct a sales tax overpayment recovery review, we learn a lot about your company's sales tax practices. We will use that knowledge to design a tailor-made seminar addressing the issues relevant to your company, at 50% of the cost of a seminar purchased as a stand-alone item.
If you choose not to take advantage of our overpayment recovery review, we can still provide a stand-alone seminar. We discuss the topics that other clients of ours have found to be helpful, and we will be happy to add other topics of your choice that are relevant to your company or your industry.
Advantages of a Baker, Shore & DiLorenzo Sales Tax Seminar:
- Customized to your needs - 100% useful information for your business
- Held at your location to minimize disruption and loss of productivity
- Attendees from accounting, purchasing, and other departments will understand sales tax better, leading to greater accuracy and fewer under or overpayments
- Improved compliance will reduce interest and penalties if you undergo a sales tax audit
- Your staff will be able to knowledgeably discuss sales tax exemptions and taxability with your customers, resulting in improved customer service.
Compliance Review
Do you want to know whether your company is meeting its sales tax obligations, or if it is paying too much or too little sales tax? A Baker, Shore & DiLorenzo Compliance Review will allow you to determine where your company stands, without any government involvement. We will provide reporting with equal emphasis on overpayments and underpayments of sales tax.
Most tax department audits produce heavily one-sided results. Auditors rarely identify overpayments of tax and if so, only to a cursory level. Overpayment recovery reviews, by their nature, do not thoroughly address underpayments of tax, as their purpose is to identify and recover overpayments. These processes can be revealing, but individually, only represent part of the equation. Our Compliance Review completes that equation.
What will you get out of the Compliance Review and why is it valuable?
- Identification of underpayments will allow you to take corrective action before your company gets audited. Future audits will not be as stressful if you are confident that they will not result in any significant assessments, interest, and penalties.
- Overpayments of tax will be reported to you in a format you can easily use at your discretion.
- Process and efficiency improvements can result in tangible cost savings for you and potentially for your customers. Some examples of this are:
- Ensuring you have correct documentation to support customers' claimed exemptions.
- Charging customers the correct rate of tax.
- Being able to credit customers who have paid taxes on exempt purchases from your company- at no increased cost to you.
- Taking advantage of bad debt credits.
- Your sales tax returns will be reviewed for completeness, calculation errors, and general accuracy.
Audit Support
Sales tax audits can be complicated, time consuming, and ultimately expensive. Baker, Shore & DiLorenzo has represented hundreds of businesses under audit, lightening their burden and lowering their final assessments.
We can assist you with your audit from any point in the process, from audit inception to mid-audit or even after the assessment has been paid. We meet with the tax department on your behalf to remove erroneously assessed exempt items, identify overpayments of tax (typically overlooked by government auditors), ensure the auditor uses sound auditing techniques, and negotiate a favorable resolution of ambiguous issues.