Minding Her Own Business: The Self-Employed Woman's Guide To Taxes and Recordkeeping

by Jan Zobel, enrolled agent

Jan Zobel is an enrolled agent with the IRS and has prepared over 6,000 tax returns. Her book, Minding Her Own Business: The Self-Employed Woman's Guide to Taxes and Recordkeeping draws upon her experience to help people new to small business get a basic understanding of recordkeeping, accounting, and taxation issues that affect small business.

The book covers setting up a receipts sheet and a disbursement schedule. Minding Her Own Business is written mainly for sole proprietors. The book is much like a Small-Time Operator for women.

If you wonder what expenses are deductible or how to minimize the chances of an IRS audit, the book has excellent chapters. One hint from Zobel's experience is "The More you break down your expense categories, the less chance of being audited." The advice is solid.

There is also an excellent discussion of the difference between independent contractors and employees. And, another great chapter discusses (with worked-out example) of how to make your quarterly estimated tax payments.

The only weakness of Minding Her Own Business is that it only teaches single-entry bookkeeping and not the more robust double-entry accounting. Yet, the simplified single-entry accounting is still preferred by many small business owners. Also, given Zobel's vast experience, we would like to see a chapter devoted to S-Corporation taxes and a more through discussion of financial statements.

Overall, if you are new to taxes and recordkeeping, we recommend this book.