Important Upcoming Tax Deadlines for Small Businesses in 2025
As a small business owner, staying on top of tax deadlines is crucial to avoiding penalties and keeping your finances in order. With 2025 well underway, now is the perfect time to mark your calendar for key tax due dates. Here’s a breakdown of the most important deadlines to keep in mind:
Quarterly Estimated Tax Payments
If your business is required to make estimated tax payments, here are the due dates for 2025:
January 16, 2025 – Q4 2024 estimated tax payment due
April 15, 2025 – Q1 2025 estimated tax payment due
June 16, 2025 – Q2 2025 estimated tax payment due
September 16, 2025 – Q3 2025 estimated tax payment due
For most businesses, these estimated payments apply if you expect to owe at least $1,000 in taxes when filing your return.
Federal Tax Return Filing Deadlines
Depending on your business structure, your tax filing deadlines will vary:
March 17, 2025 – S Corporations (Form 1120-S) and Partnerships (Form 1065)
April 15, 2025 – C Corporations (Form 1120) and Sole Proprietors (Schedule C on Form 1040)
If you need more time, you can file for an extension, which gives you until:
September 15, 2025 – Extended deadline for S Corps and Partnerships
October 15, 2025 – Extended deadline for C Corps and Sole Proprietors
Payroll & Employment Tax Deadlines
Employers must also stay on top of payroll tax filings:
January 31, 2025 – Deadline to issue W-2s to employees and 1099-NEC forms to contractors
January 31, 2025 – Form 941 (Q4 2024) and Form 940 (annual FUTA tax return) due
April 30, July 31, October 31, 2025 – Quarterly Form 941 filings for payroll taxes
State Tax Deadlines
In addition to federal deadlines, be sure to check your state’s tax filing and payment deadlines, as they may differ from the IRS schedule.
Plan Ahead & Stay Compliant
To avoid last-minute stress and potential penalties, consider:
✅ Using accounting software like QuickBooks to track your finances
✅ Working with a tax professional to ensure accuracy
✅ Setting up reminders for key due dates
By staying organized and proactive, you can make tax season much easier and focus on growing your business. Need help getting your books in order before tax time? Let’s chat!
Business Meals and Entertainment Deductions
Because of changes over the years, it can be quite confusing determining what is deductible and by what percentage when it comes to meals and entertainment expenses for businesses. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) enacted by Congress in 2018 made several significant changes to the deductions for meals, entertainment, and employee fringe benefits, including making business entertainment expenses entirely nondeductible. The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) enacted in 2021, in an effort to support the restaurant industry impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, allows businesses to deduct 100% for the costs of some meals provided by restaurants for the 2021 and 2022 calendar years.
After combing through many websites from CPAs, tax attorneys, and the IRS, I have attempted to put together this spreadsheet to make it easier to understand the rules.
In QuickBooks, I recommend creating at least three accounts in the Chart of Accounts: Meals (100%), Meals (50%), and Meals & Entertainment (non-deductible). When adding expenses, I also recommend always having a vendor (Restaurants instead of adding the name of every restaurant to the vendor list) and putting the name of the restaurant in the memo instead along with a description of the type of expense (what it was for). I use my Bookkeeping Client Portal, for capturing restaurant and other receipts and for pushing these expenses with their attachments into QuickBooks.
How Do You Know If Your QuickBooks Financial Statements Are Correct?
Before sending your Profit & Loss and/or Balance Sheet reports from QuickBooks to your tax preparer or before you file your taxes yourself, you may want to continue reading.
There are several litmus tests to confirm that what is in your QuickBooks is correct and that your financial statements reflect this.
If you invoice (use Accounts Receivable) your customers out of QuickBooks, then you may want to make sure that the Total Income on your Profit & Loss report on an accrual basis matches your Sales by Customer Summary report.
Sales (Income) should be reflected with transactions only such as invoices, sales receipts, credit memos, and refund receipts (QuickBooks Online only), not using deposits to income or journal entries. To find out where the discrepancy lies, run a profit and loss report by customer or job and compare with the sales by customer summary report totals for each.
Fortunately, QuickBooks Online includes a Not Specified column to make this easier to find.
The culprit: 2 transactions, expenses, that were coded to income accounts.
This is another scenario in Quickbooks Desktop.
In comparing the reports, we find that the dollar amount discrepancy shows up for a Cost of Goods Sold account. Upon further drilling down, an invoice was used, but the item was not set up with an income account.
Once the item is fixed to either an income account or as two-sided (check box above Description checked), this fixes the reports and financial statements.
In my next post, I will show another test, so please subscribe below to get notifications to my blog. Thanks!