We had our regular Thursday morning meeting at the Hibernia Diner.
In attendance:
Greg Angelillo – Chapter President
Dan Gehrig – Vice-President
Joe Troy – Secretary
Bimal Gupta – Treasurer
Robin Wolfe – Tip Mistress
Michelle Clevenger – Membership Chair
Marianne Jones
Jeff Jones
John Tully
Rudy Riveron
Joe Nugent
Martha Paravati
Justin Marcus Smith
Dan Linkletter
Joe Bellistri
Absent:
Janet Navarro
Andy Krauser
Frank Berman
We welcomed back Marianne and Jeff Jones to the group after their recent absence due to the passing of Marianne’s father. Jeff was at his ebullient and effervescent best as today’s greeter.
Greg announced to the group that based on the recent balloting Michelle Clevenger would be taking over as Membership Chair and Dan Gehrig would be taking over as Vice-President. We wish them luck!
Our scheduled speaker couldn’t make the meeting so Bimal Gupta stepped up and offered to fill the slot. Bimal is our CPA and chapter treasury and the owner of Parsippany Tax and Accounting.
Bimal Gupta addressing group
It’s become somewhat of a tradition to start with a joke and Bimal’s joke included astrology and doubtful parenthood!?
Bimal discussed the four main areas his company gets involved in:
- CPA services. Despite the company name they are not technically a tax preparer (although that does make up 60% of their business) but they do get involved in a lot of tax work. Not just income tax – also sales, property and estate tax.
- Audit services for both companies and non-profits.
- Payroll services.
- Bookkeeping
LeTip of Denville chapter members listening to Bimal
Bimal talked about a common misconception about taxes – “if you make money you have to pay to tax”. This is not true for a variety of reasons including not making enough money and by listening and/or not listening to the government.
He often advises his clients that if they have a big purchase (more than $5000) that they should buy it in Jersey City where the sales tax is lower.
He also cautioned that IRS English and regular English are not the same thing. When the IRS says that something is “voluntary” – they don’t necessarily mean it.
Another misconception related to estate tax. Many people don’t think they’ll have an issue with estate tax because the federal threshold is $5M, but in NJ the state gets involved with estates worth over $625,000. Bimal can help with creating trusts to help avoid this estate tax.
Bimal offers the option to have a free second look at tax returns to see if your existing tax preparer missed anything out. Bimal’s parting shot to the group was to start paying attention to their financial situation and to remember that they were there to help!
The meeting wrapped up with our commercials and the passing of the tip jar.
Posted by John Tully
