Kondor Tax & Accounting · Industries
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We are a small business accountant in Vancouver, Washington, and most of our work sits in six industries. Each one has a different set of books behind it, a different set of filings, and a different place where money is usually left on the table.
Some things are the same everywhere, and it is worth saying them once rather than six times. Every client gets a return prepared with the year ahead in mind, credits pursued where they apply — small employer health care, retirement plan, family leave, electric vehicle — and, for S corporations, the pass-through entity elective tax handled where it makes sense. Entity structure is revisited as a business grows rather than set once and forgotten. What follows is what changes from one industry to the next.
We also work with spas and salons, sports professionals, recreational facilities such as sports fields, and senior and retirement homes, among others. If yours is not listed, ask — the six below are the industries we are asked about most, not the limit of the work.
We work with both sides of this industry — agents earning commission, and investors holding property — and they are different conversations.
For investors with substantial involvement in real estate, real estate professional status is worth examining. Where its tests are genuinely met, the passive activity loss limitation stops applying and rental losses become usable against other income. It is not automatic and it is not for everyone, but for the right client it is the single largest item on the page. Bonus depreciation and cost segregation are the other two worth looking at.
Structurally, most of this is LLCs and S corporations, and the filings are few — an 1120-S or a 1065. We also help clients move existing property into an entity, which needs care: a transfer of mortgaged property can trigger a due-on-sale clause, and Washington's real estate excise tax can apply unless an exemption does.
By talking people out of structures they do not need. Owning a rental does not require anything sophisticated — it can simply go on Schedule E of your personal return. There is no obligation to hold it in an entity or a trust, and a surprising number of people pay to set up something they were never going to benefit from.
How involved the books need to be depends entirely on the work. Some clients need full job costing, with prevailing and union wages tracked per job — that is customised and quoted individually, because no two of those are alike.
Most contractors need something simpler but no less important: tracking by location, so that sales tax and local taxes land in the right jurisdiction. Working both sides of the river, with Portland's city taxes on one side, makes this ordinary rather than exotic.
We handle the rest of it too — L&I class assignments, prevailing wage, subcontractor 1099s, licensing and bonding. Licensing work is the one place we will ask a lot of you: it moves at the speed of the paperwork you can get us.
The timing of deductions. Costs on a job that is not finished sit in work in progress rather than coming off this year's income, which means a year that felt expensive can produce a tax bill that feels wrong. Knowing which of your jobs are open at year end changes what you can plan for.
Three things dominate the books at a dealership: inventory tracking, floor plan financing, and — for anything doing real volume — the Oregon Corporate Activity Tax. Once commercial activity passes roughly a million dollars, CAT stops being a footnote.
Entity structure matters more here than in most industries, and the right answer is genuinely a function of size and income. A C corporation, an S corporation and a sole proprietorship all make sense for dealerships at different points, and the wrong one is expensive in a way that compounds.
Consignment sales and CAT. If your dealership sells vehicles on consignment, there may be a reduction available on the CAT side that a good many dealerships are not taking. Whether it applies turns on the detail of your consignment arrangement, which is exactly why it is worth a conversation rather than a paragraph on a website. If you sell on consignment in Oregon, call and ask us about it.
Therapists, consultants, accountants, bookkeepers and accounting firms — we have clients across all of it, and we sometimes work alongside other professionals, checking each other's work. That is normal in this field and it is a good sign, not an awkward one.
The usual shape is a sole proprietorship, often with an LLC for asset protection, moving to an S corporation when the numbers justify it. We do not start a new business in the most complicated structure available. Growing a client into an S corporation when the time is right is cheaper than launching them into one with the highest filing fees on day one and hoping the income arrives.
At the point where a practice starts earning seriously, the strategy has to change. A sole proprietorship with very little overhead has very little to deduct, and that combination can cost a lot in tax. It is also worth saying plainly: owing more tax generally means you earned more. That is not a bad year. It is a signal that there is now something to plan around, and planning is what brings the figure down next time.
Inventory, cost of goods sold, work in progress, overhead absorption — how much of this a client needs depends on the client, but the surprise is how often a small manufacturer needs the sophisticated version. A modest shop with real inventory and real work in progress has more complex books than a service business several times its size.
Every entity type shows up here. We offer full entity structure planning, and a lighter structured version for owners who simply want to see the options laid out before committing to anything — that sits under advisory.
Depreciation planning and credits. Equipment purchases have timing consequences worth deciding on deliberately rather than discovering in April, and manufacturers are among the likeliest of our clients to qualify for credits they are not claiming. If you are a growing corporation, that is the conversation to have with us.
Most of our trucking clients are owner-operators running as their own firm on a 1099. Others have several units and a mix of W-2 and 1099 drivers, which is a meaningfully different set of books and a meaningfully different set of filings.
We prepare the heavy vehicle use tax, Form 2290, alongside the return. For the compliance side of a carrier's life, we have someone we refer to.
Self-employment tax is the most misunderstood part of this industry, and it runs in both directions — drivers who did not expect it at all, and drivers convinced it applies to more than it does. The larger figure, though, is usually structural. We see owner-operators paying more than they need to, not because they missed a deduction, but because the business is set up in the wrong form for what it now earns. That is a conversation worth having before the next season rather than after it.
We keep a standardised chart of accounts for every industry on this page, along with deduction lists written in plain language for people who do not work in tax. They are free, and you do not have to become a client to take one.
We offer discounted QuickBooks Online subscriptions for our clients — held through the firm’s accountant account, set up by us and connected to your books. There is no percentage on this site because Intuit changes its pricing; ask and we will tell you the current figure. About QuickBooks with us →
A short call is the fastest way to find out whether we are a good fit for how your business actually runs.
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