Why Small Business Owners Need Accountants More Than Ever

Small business owners are tired, frustrated, and confused by the never-ending stream of tax rules, compliance issues, payroll requirements, sales tax laws, IRS notices, state regulations, and all the things they “don’t know they don’t know.”

That is exactly why Joe DiChiara is refocusing the podcast.

In this episode of How to Win Big at Business with Accountants, Joe explains why small business owners need better access to practical, real-world guidance from accountants, tax preparers, enrolled agents, CPAs, attorneys, insurance professionals, and other small business experts.

Joe shares the story of his first real business: leasing an ice cream truck before his final semester of college. He made money, kept records, signed legal documents, saved receipts, and thought he was doing everything right — until he received a frightening tax warrant letter from the New York State sales tax department.

At 22 years old, working in his first accounting job, Joe thought he might need a tax attorney or lose his job. The real issue? He had registered as a sales tax vendor and did not know he had to file quarterly sales tax reports, even though no tax was due.

That experience taught him a lesson every business owner eventually learns:

Business is not as simple as it looks.

Joe explains why the podcast is evolving into a platform that brings in accountants and other experts to help small business owners understand the issues that can create unnecessary pain, penalties, overpaid taxes, missed opportunities, and sleepless nights.

This episode covers why business owners need to understand sales tax, nexus, payroll, independent contractors, foreign worker forms, IRS audits, state tax departments, departments of labor, technology-driven enforcement, and the growing risk of AI-assisted audits.

The message is clear: small business owners need guidance, support, and education before the problem arrives.

If you’re a self-employed professional trying to build a real business, this podcast was created for you.

New episodes break down the systems, strategies, and structures needed to move from solopreneur to sustainable business owner.

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https://www.youtube.com/@Bedrock360BusinessSolutions/featured
Thanks for listening!

If you want fewer headaches, fewer IRS surprises, and more smart systems running your business (so YOU don’t have to), let’s talk.

Book a strategy call: www.timewithjoe.com

Because running a business shouldn’t feel like wrestling an octopus… alone.
Also check out:
www.Bedrock360BusinessSolutions.com (Complete Coverage)
www.Bedrock360TaxSolutions.com (Tax Guard 365)
www.Bedrock360BusinessTraining.com (Courses)

Thanks for listening!

If you want fewer headaches, fewer IRS surprises, and more smart systems running your business (so YOU don’t have to), let’s talk.

Book a strategy call: www.timewithjoe.com

Because running a business shouldn’t feel like wrestling an octopus… alone. 

Also check out:
www.Bedrock360BusinessSolutions.com (Complete Coverage)

www.Bedrock360TaxSolutions.com (Tax Gaurd 365) 

www.Bedrock360BusinessTraining.com (Courses)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Are you a small business owner, maybe frustrated, a little bit tired, and confused over the never-ending stream of tax issues, compliance issues, rules, regulations, and not knowing what you don't know? What I'm saying, if you're losing sleep, wondering, did I miss something? Is there some other role that I never heard about that's going to come back to bite me? Wouldn't it be nice to have access to world-class guidance at reasonable rates? Well, that's what I'm trying to offer here. Welcome to How to Win Big at Business with Accountants. My name is Joe Dechara. I am an entrepreneur with a CPA license. I've been in the trenches for over 40 years with my clients, seeing the pain and suffering, and feeling the pain and suffering myself, running and trying to operate my own businesses. You see, when I was 17, my father told me that CPAs ran businesses. And he saw me, he saw how I hustled, how I was always able to make money. I was owing people's lawns. I did everything that an entrepreneur does as a kid. So when I heard that CPAs ran businesses, I said, well, then I'm going to be a CPA. Not knowing meant I was going to be an accountant. But that's for a that's a story for another day. So I went on my journey, and before my last semester of college, I decided I was going to run my first real business. So I went out, I leased an ice cream truck, and it decided I was going to run it the way I thought a business should be run. And it worked. I signed legal documents, I kept records, I kept receipts. I was a good business owner. I made money. Okay. One of the things that I had to do is I had to register as a New York State sales tax fan. But I went away to college, my last semester, I went away with a pocket full of money and the confidence that I could start and run businesses. Six months into my accounting career, I get a letter from the New York State Sales Tax Department. I open it up, it's got a big red stamp on it that says tax warrant. Now, a warrant to me means there's a warrant out for my arrest. I'm in trouble for some unknown reason. It's every business owner's nightmare. Now, being a 22-year-old kid with my first job, I'm scared to death. I'm working at a CPA firm. I thought I was going to lose my job because of some stupid thing I did with my business. And I didn't sleep for three days. I didn't eat. And I'll never forget on a Friday, I decided. Now remember, I'm working at a CPA firm. So I got the courage to ask one of the accountants there. I showed him the letter. I was embarrassed and I said, Bill, I think I'm in trouble. What do I need a tax attorney? What should I do? And he looks at the letter, he said, Why don't you call the number on the letter and see exactly what they want? So it sounded simple enough. So I did that and I found out, lo and behold, I wasn't, they weren't going to arrest me. I didn't have to hire a tax attorney. But when I registered as a sales tax vendor, that required me to file quarterly reports. So the government is waiting for my quarterly sales tax report. I never sent it because I didn't know I had to file it. They told me what to do. They said, file the return for the period I was in business, put out of business, send them what they call the certificate of authority. No money due because ice cream and candy were not subject to sales tax in New York State. So I didn't owe any money, and my life was saved. But what it did was it gave me the experience that maybe business wasn't as easy as I thought it was. And over the years I learned that it's not, it's complicated. Listen, I love being a business owner, but not everybody is cut out for it. And most of us don't prepare, we don't get the education. Now I went to school for accounting and I was in accounting firms for years, and I still didn't know everything there was to know about business. I still had a lot to learn. I still had a lot of mistakes to make, but I started to learn to ask questions. I started to learn how to minimize my risk, how to surround myself with the right people. And decades later, what it evolved to was my new business entity, which was called Bedrock Business Builders, where I decided that I was going to try to help the millions of business owners that were just like me starting a business, running a business, but get blindsided. And what I found out is there's a huge shortage of accountants in the US, in the world, in the world. But I focus on the US. And so what I was able to do is develop a business model where we could service people that normally couldn't hire accountants because there's such a shortage, and there's so many businesses, it's supply and demand. Accountants, tax repairers, CPAs are expensive. Our prices are out of the range of tens of millions of small business owners. So what do they do? They wind up going out doing most of the work themselves. They buy a stupid program like QuickBooks, which perpetrated the biggest lie in history, which was you could save money by doing your own bookkeeper. What a lie. And then they bought turbo tax and told people you could save money by doing your own taxes. Bad move. Bad move. It takes at least 10 years of experience to really know what you're doing. So what do small business owners do? Okay. What choices do they have? One of the things that I did was I started this podcast. This is the 31st episode. And originally it was called How to Win Big at Business. And I focused on just providing all of the tricks, tips, hacks that I've learned along the way to help you, the small business owner, avoid all of the unnecessary pain and suffering. Let's face it, if you're in New York, let's say, and you have a construction business, you got all kinds of issues. You got payroll issues, independent contractor issues, workers' comp issues, and forget about sales tax, the most complicated, mind-boggling conglomeration of tax laws that they've ever conceived of. It's so complicated, I don't think the sales tax people even know what it is. Okay. If you're in e-commerce anywhere in the country, you have to get familiar with these new Nexus rules. And if you don't know what Nexus is and you're a small business owner, you better start learning it very quickly. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that I don't want to limit my audience to only my experience. I've had a lot of experience, my own trials and tribulations, starting and trying to run my own businesses. I've had my share of failures, but I've also had my share of successes. So I said and I went to my team and I and I asked them, what can we do? What can we do to provide the information that I want to give these small business owners out there? There's over 33 million small businesses. No, 33 million businesses in the United States. Over 85% of them are single owner entities, and the bulk of them are taxed as sole proprietors. Now, millions of people went out and set up LLCs without knowing that provides no tax benefit at all. LLCs were not created for active trade or businesses, they were created for legal protection for wealthy investors. But that's episode for another day. The fact is that there's millions, tens of millions of small business owners out there struggling, not reaching their full potential because they simply don't know what they don't know. Just like I didn't know, I had to fill out one simple form for sales tax. So what I've decided to do is refocus this podcast. And I am I am reaching out to world-class accountants, tax preparers, enrolled agents, people that know the accounting industry and small businesses. And it doesn't necessarily, I'm not going to limit it to accountants. I will bring on insurance experts, attorneys, anyone that's in the small business realm. And I say small business because if you're a large business, and when I say large, let's define this. If you have 50 or more employees, that's large. By the small business administration's definition, any business with less than a thousand employees is a small business. But that's a whole other issue because the truth is you have 500 employees, you're a big business. I don't care what the government says, and that's part of the smoke and mirrors that we have to deal with. The fact of the matter is that there's probably 25 million business owners out there that are getting hammered, overpaying on their taxes, not knowing what's around the corner, because all it takes is one small mistake and it could put you out of business. I've seen it happen way too many times. Mistakes that are avoidable. So we are rebranding this podcast now, how to win bigot business with accountant. And like I said, I will bring on other experts, but there's only so much room in the title. So we are going to focus on accountants because that's what I am, but I'm not going to limit it just to the accounting world. Although there's plenty of accountants out there that are willing to give their knowledge and experience on this platform. So it becomes a resource for everybody. And to be honest with you, it becomes a resource for me because it's never-ending. I'm in this 40 years and I'm still learning. If you're in business, it's one of the requirements, I believe, is a commitment to lifelong learning. Listen, they've been talking about getting rid of the IRS since before I was born. Nobody likes the IRS. Probably even employees that work at the IRS. But the IRS is just a tip of the iceberg, folks. It's a problem. The IRS itself, the concept isn't a problem because let's face it, there has to be some mechanism, some agency that's in charge of collecting the revenue for the federal government. Leaving all the politics out of this, there has to be some. If there was no internal revenue service, there's still going to be some mechanism. Payments still have to be made. So if you think that the IRS is going anywhere soon, you're mistaken. They're not going anywhere. Can they be run better? Absolutely. And that's another subject for another day. I could I could write books, plenty of people could write books, just about all the problems they've had since COVID. It's really saddening because they're probably the biggest collection agency in the world, and they've crumbled. They've been decimated. They can't even answer the phone. They're sending out notices that make no sense. They're holding back refunds. It's bad. It's never been worse in my lifetime. Okay. It doesn't end there. We got the state income tax departments. Then we got the departments of labor, which is responsible for collecting unemployment insurance. We have issues about whether a person is an employee or an independent contract. Now we have COVID. I've been doing remote accounting for almost 25 years. So this is nothing new to me. Working remotely is normal for me. It wasn't normal for a lot of other people until COVID. And or you might not know, but they call it the great resignation. In the United States, over 4 million people didn't go back to work. They chose staying home. And that didn't mean that they stopped making money. I believe that a lot of them decided to start businesses from home. And now you have AI on top of that. A whole nother opportunity for people to start businesses. So there's probably going to be millions more businesses because it's a lot easier now to start a business. But now we also have foreign workers because companies, accounting firms, all kinds of businesses now. Uh they got used to working remotely. It became a norm. So now you have all of these issues with hiring foreign workers, because believe it or not, there's a ticking time bomb there. There's a form, a little known form, that if you hire a foreign worker, you have to get them to sign a W A D E N. And what that does is it gets you off the hook from withholding taxes from them. Because here's the thing whether you're hiring an independent contractor or an employee, if you hire an employee, done deal, you have to withhold taxes. No question about it, it's in black and white. If you hire an independent, it's not black and white. It depends. So if you hire a US-based worker, you get them to fill out an I9, not an I-9, a W9. Okay. That will verify they're going to attest under the penalties of perjury that they are not subject to backup withholding. If they are, you're required to withhold the taxes. If you don't, the IRS could come to you and say, Well, you should have been withholding it. You're bad, pay us. So you're going to be paying somebody else's taxes that just because you didn't get them to sign a form. Same thing with W8B E N. Somebody says they're a foreign, a foreign person living in a foreign country. Let's face it, you don't you really have no way of knowing. You don't know if they're in New York or in India. They have VPNs as ways to hide where you're working from. And to be honest with you, most people aren't concerned about that. All they want is talent, they want somebody to do the work for them. Okay. What the W8BEN does is that foreign worker is telling you that they are not subject to US taxes. So you're off the hook. If you don't have that form and the IRS comes knocking, you're going to have to pay the IRS 30% of whatever you've paid them. That could be crippling for a small business owner. So it doesn't matter if they're a social media manager, a web developer, a bookkeeper. You need to get that form. And that those are just examples of some of the simple things that people don't know that they should be doing, that they're required to do, but have been getting away with it. And let me cover that and then I'll then I'll close. Technology, the government's thirst for money, it's all gonna change how, when, and why people get audited. See, it was starting before COVID. I saw it. I saw people getting audited that normally didn't get audited. And then the way they were getting audited was no. Instead of bringing their books and records down to the IRS, the IRS asked them to just fax all their invoices in. It didn't matter if you had thousands of receipts, they wanted you to fax them. And then guess what they're doing? Now AI wasn't around then, but uh they were using technology to scan all the receipts, coming up with a number and seeing if it matched the tax returns. Now they have AI just like everyone else. So all of these audits, number one, they're going to be easier to detect because government agencies now can talk to each other like they never talked before. Their computers were never in sync. They can do the analysis, the AI can easily do the analysis. And the IRS has had algorithms before Google, before Google, before anybody even heard what an algorithm is. They have formulas, okay? But now it's gonna be even easier. It's gonna be so easy, it's gonna be ridiculous. So, my prediction, what I see in the next two to five years, is millions of people are gonna get audited. And if you're not ready, you're looking at big problems. Anyone that's ever gotten audited, there's nothing good ever comes out of an audit. Even I've handled audits with no taxes due. I even handled my first audit, my friend from college. He got audited. I wasn't a CPA, then I did his return, and he got audited. He was a sole proprietor. And we went to the audit and he had such impeccable records. And it turned out he had all of these auto repairs and auto expenses that he never gave me. They were out of pocket, and I didn't find out until the audit. So the result of that one audit was I filed an amended return and he actually got money back. That was the first time I ever had anybody get audited, and the IRS actually owed them money. So, anyway, that's my story. I'm sticking with it, folks. How to win big at business with accountants, get the guidance, get the support, get the information to run your business that's going to help you sleep at night and save money on your taxes. Run your business better, stay in the know, educate yourself. If you like what you hear, follow me, download the podcast, listen to it while you're exercising, listen to it in your car, while you're commuting. It doesn't matter. It's important information. And I want to say, God bless, thank you, and I'm looking forward to a lot more podcasts like this. Thank you.