As a small business owner myself, as the end of the year approaches, I’m scrambling to process all of the year’s financial paperwork and prep for tax season. After twelve months of helping our craft brewing clients with their financing needs, it’s time to hit the books for Brewery Finance. I don’t know about you, but with the holidays on the horizon, it’s all the more difficult to focus on the minutia of reconciling charts of accounts. So, from one finance guy to yours truly, I do want to highlight the potential for tax rebates specifically for craft brewers that can help put a little sugar on the ol’ tax lemon.
Tax Rebates Just for Brewers?
Yes! There is specific legislation in the Employee Retention Credits portion of the CARES Act that applies to craft breweries with more than 4 W-2 employees. These rebates can be worth up to thousands of dollars per employee, depending on the specifics of the situation. Furthermore, breweries can apply for these rebates even if they received financial assistance from a PPP loan in the past.
National Auditing Services
Brewery Finance is referring our clients to National Auditing Services to help our partners find and maximize these rebates. National Auditing Services specializes in these types of refunds and have the niche expertise necessary to work directly with those in the craft brewing industry to help them maximize their rebate. Most importantly, National Auditing Services works on a contingency basis, so they do not collect a fee unless you are capturing a rebate. If you are interested in receiving a personalized referral to National Auditing Services, please reach out to us at Brewery Finance.
Other Tax Tips for Craft Brewers
Need a few more inspirational tax tips to help put a little more shine on your end-of-the-year financial to-do list? Here are a few more low-hanging fruits for our friends and partners in the craft brewing industry.
- Don’t forget to write off all of your miles for local and regional deliveries. Many of our partners are still delivering their products to nearby retailers. Don’t forget to track and write off the mileage for these vehicles.
- Itemize and expense continued education and industry networking opportunities for employees. Did your brewers or employees attend regional conferences or craft brew-specific events? These continued education and networking opportunities are legitimate expenses for your business. Be sure to have employees itemize any personal expenses they accrued attending these events.
- Too much net revenue? Spend down your annual net revenue before the end of the fiscal year by bulk ordering bottles, cans, labels, and shipping materials before December 31st.
- Pro tip – Be sure to add a “Vendor” to each expense item throughout the year and when reconciling your chart of accounts. It’s easy to overlook this simple element of categorizing expenses, but if you associate each expense with a Vendor, you can produce more accurate Vendor Expense Reports at the end of the year. These vendor expense reports are extremely useful for analyzing expenses, forecasting, and budgeting.