Sales and use tax is one of those obligations that quietly compounds. Baum's Accounting Services keeps your returns prepared and filed on the schedule the state assigned you.
Sales tax is not hard math. It's a calendar problem more than anything, and it goes wrong when a business grows into new counties or new states without noticing the obligation followed. We handle the full cycle, from tracking what you collected through filing the return and remitting the tax.
Most of the businesses we work with sell across Kentucky, and a fair number sell beyond it. That means different rates by jurisdiction, different rules about what's taxable, and different filing frequencies that the state can change on you after a good year. Baum's Accounting Services tracks all of it against your actual sales data in QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, or NetSuite, so the number on the return matches the number in your books.
The work starts with figuring out where you actually owe. That means looking at where you sell, where you deliver, where you install, and whether any of that crosses a threshold that creates an obligation. From there it's a monthly or quarterly routine: pull the sales data, separate taxable from exempt, reconcile it against what the books say, prepare the return, and file it. If the state reassigns your filing frequency, the routine changes with it. You get told what changed and why, in a sentence, not a memo.
Auditors rarely argue about the returns. They argue about the exempt sales you can't document. A contractor buys materials for resale, a nonprofit places an order, a customer swears they're exempt, and nobody collects the certificate. Two years later the state asks and the sale gets treated as taxable, with interest. Keeping those certificates current is unglamorous work that pays off exactly once, and it pays off big. We build a simple file structure for them, check it when new customers come on, and flag the ones that have gone stale before anyone from the state asks.
This is worth saying plainly. Baum's Accounting Services does not prepare income tax returns and does not file them, for you or for your business. That work goes to an outside CPA firm, and We will hand your books to whichever one you already use or point you toward a good fit if you don't have one. What you get here is the sales and use tax side handled all year, plus books that are closed, reconciled, and ready when your CPA asks for them. Nobody spends March rebuilding a general ledger.
Usually it's growth that forces the issue. You add a second location, start shipping to customers in other states, pick up a big contract in a jurisdiction you've never billed in, or hire the salesperson who opens up a whole new region. Any one of those can change what you owe and where. If your monthly close is already running late, sales tax is the first thing to slip, and slipped filings turn into penalty notices that cost more than the tax did. Book a consultation and We will tell you straight whether this is a real exposure or a nothing.
No. Baum's Accounting Services handles sales and use tax filings, not income tax returns, and Justin is not a CPA. Income tax work gets referred to an outside CPA firm. What we do is keep the books accurate and closed on time so that firm has clean numbers to work from instead of a shoebox.
Fixable, usually. Late filings generate penalties and interest, and they compound quietly, but states would rather have you current than gone. The first step is a look at what's been filed, what hasn't, and how far back it goes. From there we get the current periods clean and work backward on the rest. Bring it up in a consultation before the notices stack higher.
Maybe. Some services are taxable and some aren't, and the answer depends on the type of work and the state you're performing it in. Construction and repair work in particular tends to blur the line between service and tangible property. It is worth ten minutes of review rather than an assumption that turns into a back assessment covering several years.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
Book a consultation. You will leave the call knowing what shape your numbers are in.
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