Sunny Patel

Even if you’re confident you’ve done nothing wrong, seeing “Internal Revenue Service” at the top of an envelope can trigger stress, confusion, and a lot of unanswered questions. Is this serious? Did I make a mistake? Am I being audited? What happens if I ignore it?

Even if you’re confident you’ve done nothing wrong, seeing “Internal Revenue Service” at the top of an envelope can trigger stress, confusion, and a lot of unanswered questions. Is this serious? Did I make a mistake? Am I being audited? What happens if I ignore it?

For many small business owners, bookkeeping falls into the same category as cleaning out an attic—you know it must be done, but it never seems urgent enough to make it to the top of the list. Receipts pile up, invoices go unreconciled, and bank accounts aren’t checked as frequently as they should be. Everything appears “fine” until the year-end rush arrives and you’re suddenly scrambling to make sense of numbers that no longer tell a coherent story.

Most business owners focus on today - today’s sales, today’s cash flow, today’s fires. But long-term success isn’t built on reacting to what’s already happened. It’s built on anticipating what comes next.

If running a business were only about numbers, most owners would make perfect financial decisions. They’d save consistently, invest strategically, hire at the right time, plan taxes early, and avoid debt traps. But real businesses don’t operate on spreadsheets alone — they run on human behavior, emotions, biases, habits, and stress.

As the year draws to a close, many investors focus on maximizing their returns — but the smartest ones also focus on minimizing their taxes. One of the most powerful (and often underused) tools for doing this is tax-loss harvesting.