These are questions to ask yourself or your accountant (if you are an entrepreneur or a business owner) after the end of your businesses financial year. The questions below are written based on business and accounting laws in Finland, but most of them apply to other countries as well.

• Do I have any business costs, which I have paid myself and have not provided a receipt yet to our accountant?
• Did I take business trips during the previous year? If yes, have I filed the related expense reports?
• Did I use my home or other personal assets (e.g. car, computer, phone, internet connection) for business purposes?
• Did I pay my healthcare costs personally or via my company?
• Did I pay my insurances personally or via my company?
• Did any of my family members take part of the business activities last year?
• Did I make any personal loan or interest payments (regarding loans taken to finance the business) during last year?
• Has there been any significant personal use of business assets during last year?
• Is my taxable business income such, that I need to review it’s classification for taxation purposes (in Finland sole traders have some say on how they want their business income to be classified – division between earned and capital income)?
• Have we documented and filed all our minutes of board- and shareholder’s meetings?
• Are we able to optimize taxes better this year, compared to what we have done previously?
• Is there a need to make some changes in our accounting systems/partners this year?

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