Ask ten business owners what their company is worth and you'll get ten confident answers — and most of them will be wrong. Not because owners are careless, but because valuing your own business is a little like appraising your own house while you're still living in it. You know every improvement you've made and every late night you've put in, and it's nearly impossible to see the number the way an outside buyer, a bank, or a court would. The interesting part is that owners' e

If you own a business in Portland, there's a good chance your books live somewhere on a spectrum between "pretty current" and "I'll deal with it in the spring." No judgment — you started your business to do the work you love, not to categorize transactions on a Tuesday night. But the gap between those two ends of the spectrum is wider than most owners realize, and it tends to show up at the worst possible moment: tax time. "Client accounting services" — CAS, if you like acron

Somewhere between opening your doors and running a real operation, every business owner asks a version of the same question: "Do I need a bookkeeper? A controller? A CFO? All three?" The titles get thrown around loosely, and the market is full of packaged offerings with impressive names. So before talking about what to hire or outsource, it helps to get plain about what each role actually does — because they are genuinely different jobs, and most businesses need them at diffe

If you live or work in the Portland area, your income can be subject to as many as three local taxes that sit on top of your federal and Oregon returns. Each one has its own boundary lines, its own income thresholds, and its own filing quirks. None of them shows up automatically on most paychecks. That last part is why our tax team hears the same question every spring: "I have taxes withheld from every paycheck — why do I owe more?" This post maps the stack: which taxes apply

For years, Oregon business owners have felt a particular sting at tax time: the state and local taxes they pay — some of the highest personal rates in the country — are only partially deductible on their federal return, thanks to the federal "SALT cap" that took effect in 2018. Oregon built a workaround: the Pass-Through Entity Elective Tax, or PTE-E. Many owners still haven't heard of it. And the ones who have often haven't heard the two most recent pieces of news — the elec

Ask a room full of Portland business owners how they chose their business structure, and you'll hear some version of the same story: "My friend has an S corp, so I set one up too." Or: "I filed an LLC online the week I started and haven't thought about it since." Here's what many owners get wrong: entity choice isn't a one-time filing decision. It's a tax decision and a retirement decision, and the right answer can change as your business grows. It also looks different in Ore