Bosman Accounting

Tax season arrives the same way every year in the North Okanagan, and the people who dread it most are usually the ones running something small on the side: a few acres of orchard, a trades outfit with one truck, a seasonal storefront that only really earns between May and September. Accounting practices exist to take that weight off, though what any given office handles differs quite a bit from the next one. Some concentrate on personal returns and keep the season short and intense. Others carry small companies through the whole year, doing bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax filings and the year-end statements a bank wants to see before it renews a line of credit.

It is worth a call before the first appointment. Ask whether the practice is taking new clients this year, since capacity tightens sharply in the weeks before the filing deadline. Ask how they prefer to receive records, because an office set up for digital handoff will want scans rather than a shoebox. And if your situation has anything unusual in it, farm income, rental units, a corporation you wound up partway through the year, say so on the phone. That one question decides whether the first meeting is productive or just a fact-finding session.