Steven M. Ellard, CPA

Steven M. Ellard, CPA Steven M. Ellard, CPA is a one stop back office provider of tax preparation, accounting, bookkeeping, Our goal is to make life easier for you and your company.

We are a local business that offers a variety of financial services that are affordable. Let us help your business become more profitable. We have an experienced team of CPAs and professional staff that will handle your year round back office paperwork allowing you to concentrate on what you do best-managing your business.

Q3 estimated taxes are due Tuesday, September 15, which is sooner than it feels when you're running a Cape Cod business ...
08/06/2026

Q3 estimated taxes are due Tuesday, September 15, which is sooner than it feels when you're running a Cape Cod business through the heart of the summer season.

Here's the situation we see most often: an owner missed the June 15 Q2 deadline, didn't realize, kept rolling through July and August, and now faces interest and penalties on top of two stacked quarters by the time they sit down with us in October.

The IRS calculates penalties from the day each quarter was due, not from when you finally pay. Skipping a quarter doesn't push the problem out, it just adds to it.

If June 15 slipped past you, the cleaner approach is to pay both quarters before September 15 lands. We wrote up what actually happens when Q2 gets missed here: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/bookkeeping/what-happens-if-you-miss-q2-estimated-tax-deadline/

Need help running the number for September? https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/contact/

If you have summer staff on the payroll, the tax side of hiring on Cape Cod has more layers than most owners expect. The...
07/30/2026

If you have summer staff on the payroll, the tax side of hiring on Cape Cod has more layers than most owners expect. The federal piece is the part everybody already knows about, social security, Medicare, and federal unemployment. Massachusetts is where the quiet surprises tend to show up.

The state runs its own income tax withholding, its own unemployment insurance through DUA, the Paid Family and Medical Leave program with both employer and employee contributions, and a workforce training fund assessment on top of that. None of it is optional, and none of it announces itself. An error here just compounds along in the background until a notice turns up in the mail, usually in October when the season is over and you finally have time to read it.

Most of the businesses we work with on the Cape were set up correctly back when they were small, and then the configuration never got revisited as new state programs came online. PFML started collecting contributions in 2019 and we are still finding Cape businesses mid-season that were never registered for it.

If you want to check your own setup against the full list, we put it together here: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/bookkeeping/payroll-taxes-in-massachusetts-cape-cod/

We're halfway through 2026 and three quarters of the way through the Cape Cod summer rush. This is the right moment for ...
07/28/2026

We're halfway through 2026 and three quarters of the way through the Cape Cod summer rush.

This is the right moment for an owner to sit down for an hour with the books and ask whether the year is actually going the way the bank balance suggests.

The mid-year profit check we run with clients usually looks at three things.

Where is gross margin compared to the same six months last year?
Where is operating expense creeping in places that didn't exist on the budget? A
nd what does cash flow look like once you account for the off-season hibernation that's about to start in October?

Most businesses look profitable in July. The same businesses look very different by December if owner draws, off-season fixed costs, and Q3 and Q4 estimated taxes were not planned for in advance.

If you want a walk-through of what a more profitable Cape Cod business actually looks like at the operating level, here's how we frame it: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/guides/more-profitable-cape-cod-business/

We can usually tell within the first ten minutes of looking at a new client's books whether the business owner is runnin...
07/20/2026

We can usually tell within the first ten minutes of looking at a new client's books whether the business owner is running personal and business through the same checking account.

The lobster dinner shows up next to the QuickBooks subscription, and the kid's hockey lessons are on the same statement as the vendor payment.

It happens with almost every business in the first year or two, and it almost always becomes a problem by year three.

Mixing personal and business spending costs you on three fronts at once.

Your books take twice as long to clean, which costs you in accounting fees. Your tax deductions become harder to defend if the IRS asks. And your personal liability protection, if you set up an LLC or an S-corp, starts to weaken because the corporate veil only works if you actually run the business as a separate entity.

The fix is straightforward: keep two operating accounts, one for the business and one for the household, plus the separate tax savings account we wrote about earlier this month.

Here's our full guide on getting personal and business separated cleanly: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/guides/how-to-separate-personal-and-business-finances-guide/

Let's look at an example we see every July at the office.A Cape Cod restaurant goes from 9 year-round staff to 24 betwee...
07/13/2026

Let's look at an example we see every July at the office.

A Cape Cod restaurant goes from 9 year-round staff to 24 between the summer hires, the dishwashers, and the seasonal servers. The owner has been running payroll on a spreadsheet and a free online calculator for three years, and most years that works fine, until one summer it doesn't.

Then a server doesn't get her tip wages withheld properly, the restaurant gets a notice from Massachusetts about underpaid PFML, and a 1099 the owner filed late costs him a few hundred in penalties he didn't budget for.

The DIY setup wasn't wrong, it just stopped fitting the size of the business.

Most Cape Cod operators we work with hit the same wall around 12 to 15 employees, or whenever the summer crew comes online. The signs are easy to miss because each one feels small, a late deposit here, a misclassified contractor there.

We pulled the most common signs together here: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/payroll/signs-your-cape-cod-business-has-outgrown-diy-payroll/

If you run a Cape Cod business with a real off-season, paying yourself is one of the harder calls you have to make. The ...
07/10/2026

If you run a Cape Cod business with a real off-season, paying yourself is one of the harder calls you have to make.

The temptation is to take a big draw in August when the deposits are stacked and skip yourself entirely in February when the lot is empty. There's a logic to that, and at the same time, it's a quiet way to put yourself in a hole.

Owners who pay themselves on the same schedule year-round, even when the bank balance argues against it, end up in a better tax position, a better banking relationship, and a better personal financial picture by year-end. The IRS notices the inconsistency, and so does any bank you'll need to talk to about a line of credit.

The right number isn't always the most you can take, it's the most you can take that the business can keep paying you all twelve months, summer or not.

Here's how we think about owner pay in more detail: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/guides/paying-yourself-as-a-business-owner/

A Cape Cod summer feels like the money is finally flowing. The bank account looks healthier than it has in months, and t...
07/08/2026

A Cape Cod summer feels like the money is finally flowing. The bank account looks healthier than it has in months, and then April comes and somebody owes the IRS a number they didn't see coming.

The summer rush is when seasonal businesses build the tax bill. Most owners we see don't realize how much of that revenue is the federal and state government's, not theirs, and by the time tax season rolls around the cash is already gone, mostly into off-season expenses.

A simple rule that works: every time a deposit lands, move 25 to 30% into a separate account and leave it alone. That account is the IRS's money, plus your Q3 estimate, plus a buffer for whatever Massachusetts tacks on.

Set it up before the August 1 deposit hits and you'll thank yourself in April.

More on the math here: https://www.stevenmellardcpa.com/accounting/cape-cod-small-business-tax-set-aside/

Wishing you a happy and safe Fourth of July from all of us at Steven M. Ellard, CPA. See you Monday.
07/03/2026

Wishing you a happy and safe Fourth of July from all of us at Steven M. Ellard, CPA. See you Monday.

Happy Father's Day to every dad out there!Whether today involves the water, the grill, or a long-overdue nap in the hamm...
06/21/2026

Happy Father's Day to every dad out there!

Whether today involves the water, the grill, or a long-overdue nap in the hammock, we hope you get to enjoy it the way you've earned it.

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Brewster, MA
02631

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