Local Accountants Offering Tacos & Tax Advice
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Local accountants want to take the intimidation out of tax season for business owners with the help of tacos.
Stephanie Hill-Manuel and Charles Manuel of Breezy Tax are hosting a "Tacos and Taxes" event in downtown Pittsfield.
"We just really wanted to demystify it and take it down a notch and open it up to questions," Hill-Manuel said. "But also for people that are running into the March 15 deadline, that's when business tax returns are supposed to be in or you need to file an extension."
The event will be held at The Collab at 163 North St., a community arts collective that recently launched and is a new client of Breezy Tax. Tacos will be provided by Hot Harry's, also located on North Street.
"Come one, come all," Manuel said.
"There is no charge at the door. Our goal really is to meet these folks as they come in, get a feel for either their business or what their job is, and point them in the best direction from a tax prep filing, budgeting, and retirement standpoint."
The duo runs their accounting and tax preparation business out of their home in Dalton. Nearly 10 years ago, Hill-Manuel began offering bookkeeping services on the side while working her corporate job and Manuel ran his own web design business.
During the pandemic, it became a family business when Manuel was hired and the two began doing consulting and taxes.
"We've been branching out and kind of finding our sweet spots of what we're good at," she said. "He was a wealth advisor back in the day so he's really taken a shine to working with financial planners. We've been working with some who are actually our clients as well to find really low intimidation ways for our clients to understand their finances."
What is it that makes business taxes seem like such an undertaking? When it comes to these returns, there have been a lot of changes over the past few years.
"One example is, you can take 100 percent of your meal deductions during the COVID timeframe, where before you could take maybe 50 percent and so that was a big difference for a lot of people," Hill-Manuel explained.
"Making sure everyone got their checks from the government, the economic ones, helping people do the [Paycheck Protection Programs] loans and then get the forgiveness from the PPP loans. There's so much going on and so we've kind of tried to give advisement in all the different areas of finance, which is why we do bookkeeping and consulting and taxes at this point and it kind of all bleeds together."
She said there are also ways to be creative with your industry, such as collecting unemployment during the off-season of a seasonal job. A huge one is saving for retirement, she added, as a lot of people don't know how to when it comes to their small business.
Breezy Tax has clients ranging from large stores to solo entrepreneurs offering massages out of their homes.
"Most of our clients right now are local. We had a bunch of clients, we actually sold them off so that we could transfer to more local clients and focus on them," Hill-Manuel said.
"We really enjoy if we drive to people's houses and offices, I mean, we are going to be in a space in the Clock Tower Building going forward in the next couple of months but honestly we don't mind meeting people where they're at."
The two hope that the "Taxes and Tacos" event is a fun night for business owners to network while gaining important financial knowledge. It is also a night to appreciate their clients while welcoming new ones.
While they are planning on around 15 people attending, they would be pleased to welcome more than 20. The event will begin at 6 p.m. and run until about 8.
Tags: accounting, taxes,
