CPA Georgetown AlternativeQuestions before the first call

Three questions show up before almost every first call. Did the platform pay the city. Is the deposit income. Who is on the hook on the 20th.

Ask on a call

Short answers, then the detail

The platform did not, as a rule, pay your city hotel tax. Many platforms remit the state hotel tax of 6 percent. The city tax under the chapter cities use for lodging is a separate 7 percent, and the host remits it to the city. The report is due on or before the 20th. If a confirmation in your account says otherwise for a specific stay, bring it. We read the confirmation. We do not guess over it.

The deposit is not the income. Guests paid more than you received. The difference is fees and sometimes tax. Income is rebuilt from the gross, and the fees are costs, and the tax is tax. Booking the deposit as sales is how a year drifts away from the filings. This is the part owners say they wish someone had said in month two, not month fourteen.

Who files

You file the city hotel tax, the sales tax if it applies, the rendition, and the franchise report. We prepare the numbers from closed books and we sit with you on the ones that are easy to get wrong. We do not hold your login as a way of being helpful. A password in a chat is a problem, not a shortcut.

Winters in Georgetown drop near freezing on a few days and bring one or two ice storms in a season. Every Texan knows the morning after, when a plan made in good weather is suddenly the wrong plan. A notice from the state feels like that morning. The worry is fair. The way through it is the closed month, not a speech. We pull the records that answer the notice. Standing beside you as a representative in an examination is outside what this practice does.

How the close holds both duties

A few more that come up every month

Do you need payroll. Only if you pay people. Then it is set up on a provider you run, and the close picks up the entries. Do the books have to be in a certain software. They have to be reconcilable. We work where the bank and the payout can be tied, and we will say if the file you have cannot get there. Can you start mid year. Yes. We will say which months have to be rebuilt before the return is honest, and which can wait.

Is this an audit. No. The work is the books, the statements without an assurance report, and the return. When a lender's package asks for a signed assurance report, that package has to go to a practice allowed to issue one. We will tell you that on the first call rather than at the end of a season.

Bring the latest payout statement and the month that worries you. That pair is enough to make the 30 minutes useful. Everything else waits until an engagement letter exists.

Cleaning fees fool the deposit test. A guest pays a cleaning fee, the platform may keep a cut, and a cleaner is then paid from the bank. Three amounts, three lines. If the fee is left inside room income and the cleaner is left out, the month looks busy and the margin is a story. We split them. The same split applies to a pet fee, an early check in, or a resolution the platform paid you after a complaint. Each one gets a name.

Two cabins are not one business just because one login shows both. A payout that mixes them has to be pulled apart before anyone talks about which property earned the month. Lenders ask at the property, not at the login. We keep a simple map from stay to property, even when the platform will not. If you add a third cabin mid year, the map grows and the old months stay as they were.

Software is a tool, not the close. A bank feed that suggests categories will suggest wrong ones on a platform deposit, because the deposit is a bundle. We accept the feed as a list of cash and we still open the statement. If your file cannot be reconciled, we will say so on the call rather than spend a season proving it. Switching tools is a project of its own, and we do not hide that project inside a monthly close.

A notice is a date and a form number and a quarter. The feeling is the ice storm morning, a plan that was fine until it was not. What we do is gather the closed month that quarter contains, the payout tie-out, and the city filing or the payable. We do not write a letter of representation, and we do not tell you the notice is nothing. If the records answer it, you will see that. If they do not, you will see the hole, which is also an answer.

Sales tax and hotel tax get confused because both can touch a stay and both can be due on the 20th. They are different reports. Hotel tax at the city is 7 percent of the lodging under the chapter cities use. Sales tax, where the address is in the downtown slice, is 8.25 percent and includes the state 6.25 plus the city 2 percent. A property outside that slice can differ. We read the address with you. We do not memorize the town and hope.

Ask one thing

A single worry is plenty for the first call.

You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.