Updated 9/15/2026
Do you hear from your annual tax preparer outside of tax season? If you answered "no," then you don't get any proper tax projections or strategy. They're not required, but if you had the opportunity to look into a crystal ball, wouldn't you take it?
Tax projections can help you strategically minimize your tax liability and avoid cash flow disruptions from unexpectedly large tax bills from the IRS.
At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we've worked with our small business clients year-round for 60 years to ensure their taxes go off without a hitch.
Over the years, they have asked us:
- What is tax planning?
- What are tax projections?
- When should you get a tax projection?
- What does a tax projection do?
Tax Planning
Tax planning is so much more than tax preparation and filing. Annual tax preparers can't do much to help you with this because they only talk to you once or twice during tax season. They just plug your numbers into forms to record the history of your year.
However, with a monthly accountant, tax planning helps you monitor your tax situation all year long to help reduce the stress of tax season and legally minimize your tax liability.
That's what we do at CSI Accounting & Payroll. With CSI, your numbers are ready for tax season. We're proactive and have periodic meetings to make sure we're on the same page, often including two dedicated tax planning meetings each year.
At the end of each tax planning meeting, you may receive a tax projection. Let's talk about them in the next section!
Tax Projections
Your annual tax preparer may tell you they're doing a tax projection. However, since they don't work with your books year-round, all they can do is compare a prior tax return to this year's tax return. By our definition, it's not a proper tax projection based on complete and accurate data.
A true tax projection is a complex process of adjusting your last tax return for changes that you know are occurring in the current year, and these inputs are used to calculate your estimated tax return ahead of time.
When CSI performs tax projections, we compare this year's first quarter to last year's to see your percentage increase. We'll ask you why the numbers may have gone up (if they have) and if you expect this to continue for the rest of the year. This helps us estimate what you can pay throughout the year so you don't have a large sum to pay at the end of the year. This helps you plan for a much smoother tax season.
You might be asking, "Why haven't I heard of tax projection before?" If you work with a big-name financial institution, they likely won't mention it because most legally can't give tax advice. An annual tax accountant also probably won't mention it because they don't work with you year-round, unlike a monthly accountant.
When to Get a Tax Projection
CSI ensures our clients know what their taxes will look like months ahead of time. Major discussions about tax planning and projections often occur in the fall because more is known about the current year's finances at that point, and it still gives you time to apply the projection to the upcoming tax season.
If there's been a large change in your finances or a change to tax laws, you'll want to get a tax projection. Most businesses will be looking at two or more tax projections per year. Business owners with complex operations may want to look into more projections if they run into fluctuations in their finances.
A truly great accounting partner may even perform a tax projection when you sign on as a client.
What Tax Projections Do
A tax projection can help avoid making tax decisions that would pay off in the short-term... but cost you big in the long-term.
If done correctly, a tax projection can take a set of assumptions to help you reduce your tax liability, eliminate tax season surprises, and guide your business decision-making by keeping you aware of your finances and how they apply to the upcoming tax season.
If you work with CSI, your monthly accountant will use a tax projection, along with all of your other relevant financial information, to guide you to your financial and tax goals. They can also help you maintain your current personal and business lifestyle by using real data to help you feel secure in your everyday choices. Not to mention, you can contact us as much as you want for no extra fee!
See the Future!
If you dreaded getting your tax return in the past because you had no idea what you might owe, hopefully learning about tax projections helped you breathe a sigh of relief.
Being able to map out the process of tax planning, tax projections, and making your estimated tax payments throughout the year is a great way to see that there are alternatives to annual tax accounting, which may not be providing you with the insights you need.
Don't walk into tax season with your eyes closed! If you'd like to discuss starting year-round tax planning with tax projections, you can schedule a free consultation by clicking the button below.
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