June 5, 2020

Tax reducing programs most business owners don’t know about

Three tax reducing programs you might not be aware of as a small business owner

1. Georgia HEART program
The Georgia HEART program was launched by our state legislature to support rural hospitals. This program helps fund local hospitals and provides incentives to individuals by redirecting state income tax to go directly to these hospitals. The incentive is a $1.00 for $1.00 tax credit on the state tax side. If you owe $1,000 to state tax, instead of paying this money to the state you can donate the $1,000 to the local hospital. It reduces your taxes by $1,000. You are redirecting your tax dollars by deciding you want your tax money to go to support rural hospitals in Georgia.

There is also an economic benefit as a business owner. On the business side this is not a charitable contribution. According to the IRS, business owners can show this as a normal business expense. This actually reduces the businesses taxable income on the Federal level. If you are interested talk to your advisor or CPA to see how they can help you with this. You can even write a check up to $10,000 as a business and $5000 as an individual until June 30th of that year. After June 30th if the amount needed to support the rural hospitals is not reached, then you can give an unlimited amount until they reach their goal of $60,000,000. A tip though is – you don’t want to donate more than your state tax liability.

What is the process?
1. Get the estimate for your tax liability (as stated earlier you don’t want to donate more than your tax liability)
2. Go to www.Georgiaheart.org – get approval (currently accepting post-June 30 tax credit pre-applications for unlimited contribution amounts!)
3. You have 180 days to send the check in

2. Georgia Student Scholarship
Georgia Student Scholarship Organization, Inc. (GaSSO) is one of the oldest and largest non-profit corporations approved by the State of Georgia to accept and manage tax-credit donations that give Georgia children access to the educational choices they deserve and need. There are other options as well where you can give money individually or as a business to provide scholarships for lower-income families to send their children to private schools, which provides lower income families access to better schools in their area. This is similar to the Georgia Heart program. Check out GaSSO’s website for more information. If you want to give to a specific school you will have to look into how to do that with the school directly.

3. Georgia Film Tax credits
In the state of Georgia there are tax incentives to film movies and TV shows here. The tax credits are 10 cents on the $1.00. You can write a $9,000 check and they can give you $10,000 worth of credits. Individuals and Businesses can both participate in this. If you haven’t filed your tax return for 2019 you can buy up to $50,000,000 in tax credits that are still available. We have a contact we can connect you with if you are interested. Reach out to us.

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