Often tax benefits for automotive or implement dealerships remain unclaimed or under-utilized. Dealership owners rarely have the valuable resource of time available to thoroughly research all available to their business. Additionally, the complexity involved with the Tax Code can be discouraging. Tax preparers for dealers frequently are overworked trying to meet important filing deadlines. With a tremendous amount of documentation required to prepare a dealership return, tax preparers must focus their resources on tax reporting. During the preparation of a Strategic Tax Plan for a dealership, the STA professionals would examine these opportunities:
- Accounting methodologies for lines of business within dealership
- Federal tax credit analysis (i.e. rebate credits)
- Accounting for incentives
- State & local tax credits and available deductions
- Inventory methodology
- Alternative risk management systems
Over the past 15 years, STA has worked with numerous dealerships across the United States, including automotive franchisees, farm equipment/implement franchisees, and others. STA has extensive experience in providing services to the automotive and farm equipment industries to ensure the proper treatment of trade discounts, advertising assessments, LIFO inventory calculations, prepaid expenses, and proper treatment of manufacturer assistance payments and incentive bonuses to ensure minimization of taxes.