Our Services

At Bontrager Consulting LLC, the careful management of your finances is our top priority. We pride ourselves on giving you personalized and thorough service that meets your business or individual needs.

We provide a full range of tax and accounting services for our clients and offer consulting services for special needs.

Tax Services

At Bontrager Consulting LLC, we assist our tax clients through efficient compliance and effective planning to help them realize substantial savings.  We use a team approach and focus on timely communication to provide our clients with excellent service. Tax partner and specialist involvement ensure that our clients receive the most experienced technical expertise we have to offer.

We offer the following tax services:

Federal, State and International Business Tax Services

Tax Return Compliance

Preparation of federal, state and international tax returns is the core of our tax services. High-levels of technical and industry specific expertise allow our tax professionals to ensure our clients’ tax returns are prepared efficiently and timely.

Transactional Structuring

We help businesses structure economic transactions in ways that minimize the tax impact by advising them on acquisitions, sales and mergers.

Accounting Method Reviews

We review businesses’ tax accounting methodologies for proper accounting and accounting method strategies to maximize income tax benefits.

Research Credit Calculations

We can help your business determine if it is eligible to claim certain federal and state research credits, assist with the documentation requirements and quantify the amount of the tax credit.

Audit & Appeal Representation

We possess the expertise and experience to represent taxpayers before tax authorities.  Our tax professionals understand the dispute resolution and appeals process and work diligently to obtain the most favorable results.

State and Local Tax Specific Services

Nexus Consulting and State Tax Liability Analysis

We can help you understand and navigate where your business is required to file and pay state and local taxes based on multistate activities.  Additionally, we will make recommendations of where to file and quantify potential tax liabilities associated with various state and local jurisdictions.

Sales and Use Tax Determination

We can assist you understand the sales and use tax consequences of specific transactions and ensure you meet appropriate filing requirements.

Tax Planning Services

Federal Income Tax Planning

We aid businesses with all aspects of federal income tax planning.  This includes implementing federal income tax strategies that maximize savings, increase profits and manage cash flows. 

State and Local Tax Planning

Our team understands the structural and transactional underpinnings of state and local regulations in ways that allow us to create solutions that mitigate tax liabilities. We provide state and local tax planning in the following areas:

• Income tax
• Franchise tax
• Sales and use tax
• Property tax
• Other miscellaneous taxes

Business Succession Tax Planning

You spent your life building your business and now you want to pass it on to the next generation or sell the value you built.  We advise businesses on the proper succession planning to preserve your family and business legacy while also looking out for potential tax consequences that may result.

Other Tax Services

Accounting for Income Taxes

Financial accounting for income taxes can be complex.  Our professionals have the technical skills and experience to help our clients navigate through these complex requirements and create efficient income tax accounting and reporting.  We also help companies stay up-to-date with regulatory guidance and disclosure requirements. The services we offer allow our clients to minimize year-end surprises and reduce risk related to reporting.  These services include:

• Calculation of tax provisions
• Account for uncertain tax positions
• Analyze current and deferred taxes
• Prepare financial statement footnote disclosures

Tax Updates

We keep our clients up-to-date on the latest federal, state and international tax issues through webinars, newsletters, website postings and face-face to meetings.   By staying ahead of tax issues we can communicate how they will impact you operations quickly and address them in a timely manner. 

Individual Tax Services

When it comes to individual taxes, change provides opportunity.  We keep on top of these changes to provide you with the best advice and strategies, especially through planning opportunities.  You can depend on us for objective guidance and personal attention.  We believe in focusing on your long-term financial goals and steering your current needs in a direction to meet them.

Estate and Trust Tax Services

If you have not considered what will happen to your hard earned assets as you age and eventually pass on you should.  Without an estate plan, the wealth you worked your entire life to build will be distributed according to state law and not according to your wishes. Estate planning is crucial if you want to minimize taxes and distribute as much as possible to your preferred beneficiaries.

We will work with you to design an estate plan customized to your particular needs by utilizing a variety of planning vehicles such as family limited partnerships, trusts and charitable entities. Our team can assist you by performing the following:

• Review wills and trust instruments.
• Estimate estate taxes and strategize alternatives that may provide tax savings.
• Review business issues including valuation and the transfer and/or disposition of business interests.
• Identify potential liquidity problems caused by federal and state estate taxes for the continued operation of the family business, probate, administration costs, etc.
• Develop a lifetime gifting program using vehicles such as family limited partnerships, charitable trusts and qualified personal residence trusts
• Prepare estate, gift, fiduciary and non-profit tax returns
• Advise you on the possible use of various trusts structures; including charitable remainder trusts, grantor annuity trusts, personal residence trusts, family partnerships, credit shelter trusts, marital deduction trusts and revocable lifetime trusts.

Looking for a little information right now? View the latest Tax and Financial News article in our Newsletter.

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Accounting Services

Reviews

Reviews are usually performed to satisfy third parties that want to be assured that the financial statements are not materially misstated.  They provide a lesser degree of assurance to financial statement users than an audit. Also, unlike an audit, there is no expression of an opinion on the financial statements, testing of controls or financial data. Reviews essentially consist of inquiries of company personnel and analytical procedures applied to financial data. 

Compilations

Compilations provide the lowest level of assurance of the financial statements services.  They are often required by outside third parties as well internally by companies.

In a compilation we assist management in presenting their financial information as financial statements in the proper form.  Compilations also require us to acquire an understanding of the client’s industry and to obtain specific knowledge about the client.  Additionally, we read the financial statements and ensure they are free from obvious material errors.  They provide no expression of an opinion on the financial statements.

Agreed Upon Procedures

Agreed upon procedures are performed when the parties involved concur that they want the accountant to perform a specific procedure or set of procedures.  They can be useful when you or a third party wants some comfort about a specific area such as inventory or cash, but do not need the assurance and related time and expense of a full audit or review. Agreed upon procedures can deal with a diverse variety of subject matter such as the quality of collateral or due diligence related to a business acquisition. In all cases, agreed upon procedures are solely the responsibility of the parties who specify them and they never provide an opinion on the subject matter or financial statements.

Visit our set of Financial Calculators for quick answers on topics such as your IRA, investments, your child's college tuition, and your mortgage or credit card calculations.

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Consulting Services

At Bontrager Consulting LLC, our business is to know and understand your financial situation.  We offer services beyond compliance and combine our experience, expertise and knowledge to add value as a trusted advisor to your financial situation.

We offer the following consulting services:

Financial Processes

Every organization can benefit from being introspective, skeptical and analytical regarding their finances.  We work with organizations to develop the predictive capabilities necessary to adapt to rapid changes and outperform their peers.  Specifically, we can help you with:

• Driving growth from new markets and opportunities.
• Enhance cash management through working capital optimization and better capital allocation.
• Improve finance operations by focusing on operational effectiveness, financial analytics as well as budgeting and forecasting.
• Enable efficient regulatory compliance.
• Effectively manage risk by identifying sources and improvements to mitigate high risk areas.

Litigation

• Marital dissolution
• Partner or shareholder dissolution
• Economic damages or bankruptcy

Financial Reporting

• Purchase price allocation
• Asset impairment testing
• Intellectual property valuations

Business Planning

• Buy and sell agreements
• Purchases or sale of a business
• General business planning

Bankruptcy and Insolvency Services

Bontrager Consulting LLC, Bankruptcy and Insolvency Group provides financial advisory services to Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustees, debtors, unsecured creditors and estate fiduciaries. We can aid you in include formal insolvency proceedings, out of court corporate wind-downs, reorganizations and liquidations.  Details of the various services our bankruptcy and insolvency group offers are detailed below:

Bankruptcy Trustees

• Facilitate electronic records retrieval.
• Identify hidden assets.
• Assist with asset sales.
• Assist with document requests.
• Perform claims, insolvency and fraudulent transfer analyses.
• Prepare required tax returns.
• Provide expert testimony.

Debtors

• Assist with the software set-up to segregate pre- and post-petition activity.
• Bankruptcy schedule preparation.
• Prepare cash flows and budget to actual analysis.
• Perform claims analyses.
• Provide guidance to development of a viable reorganization plan.
• Prepare required tax returns.

Creditors' Committees

• Assess the reasonableness of cash flows
• Analyze budgets to actuals.
• Perform preference analyses.
• Investigate insider transactions.
• Search for fraudulent transfers and asset misappropriations.
• Analyze solvency.
• Prepare reports and provide expert testimony.

Estate Fiduciaries

• Assist with the sale of hard assets.
• Assist with negotiating private sales of intangibles.
• Develop causes of action to recover assets.
• Distribute estate assets to creditors on the basis of priority ranking.

Forensic Accounting

Fraud is an ever present and growing problem for business organizations. It can go undetected for years and is often committed by “trusted” employees.  Fraud impacts nearly every organization regardless of size and the costs can be substantial.

We believe the best way to deal with fraud is to prevent it.  Our approach goes beyond looking at the numbers to analyze and interpret them and understand the story they tell.   We assess and protect organizations from fraud through a rigorous step by step approach as follows:

• Evaluate your organization’s overall fraud risk.
• Identify possible fraud schemes with an eye toward industry specific criteria.
• Rate any recognized schemes and analyze risk tolerance.
• Develop policies, procedures and strategies to mitigate the fraud.
• Implement and test detection and prevention against future fraud.

Check out our Newsletter for the latest article on Financial Planning.

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