As a small-business owner, you have good odds of someday facing a penalty for late filing and/or late payment of your or your corporation’s taxes. It’s likely you will think that you have to pay the penalties. But as you’ll learn here, when you know the rules of the road, you can travel the IRS mercy path and have those penalties forgiven.

Tax reform changed the rules of the game when choosing your best tax structure. A properly structured spousal partnership could now be your best choice, even over the S corporation in some circumstances. But beware, you need to navigate nuances in the law to do this correctly.

The new and improved Section 179 deduction gives you more ways to take advantage of immediate tax deductions. It’s somewhat like having a flexible tax shelter in your back pocket for when you need it (and also need the property, of course).

You can plan your tax-deductible business life to avoid cold winters and hot summers. To do this, you need to know what a tax home is and where your tax home is located. The good news is that you have just one tax home unless you are one of those rare individuals who has no physical home.

If you are married, operate as a sole proprietor or as a single-member LLC taxed on Schedule C of your Form 1040, and have no employees, you absolutely, positively must consider hiring your spouse and creating the 105-HRA medical reimbursement plan. In this situation, the 105-HRA can cut your taxes without you spending one penny.

If you are thinking of a gym for your employees, this is the article for you. The article keeps you from using the wrong set of IRS regulations. Yep, there two different sets of regulations from two different code sections that could apply.

When it comes to the new 20 percent Section 199A tax deduction, does a spouse in an out-of-favor business taint the Section 199A for you? The good news is no. But because of the multiple businesses, you may have a problem on the taxable income front.

Tax reform went hard after your state and local tax deductions. The reduced deduction for your state income taxes has some states pretty riled up. The IRS is about to issue regulations that conflict with what the states are attempting to do. From your standpoint, count on the IRS winning for the moment, and use the clear planning opportunities you have available to you that will create more deductions for your property taxes.

If you can qualify to move your W-2 income to Schedule C so as to enable those legitimate business expense deductions that you are losing to tax reform, should you do it? Maybe. You need to run the numbers to see if the new Schedule C taxes outweigh the monies you lost by not being able to deduct employee business expenses.