Business owners who employ their children in a reasonable but limited capacity at their firms can rake in tax savings and start their kids’ first retirement accounts in the process.

But the entrepreneurs and their financial advisors or tax professionals must ensure they’re diligently keeping the kids’ employment records, complying with some variation in state-level rules for business entities and addressing any other potential ramifications, according to Miklos Ringbauer, of Los Angeles-based MiklosCPA, and Kevin Thompson, CEO of Fort Worth, Texas-based RIA firm 9i Capital Group.

READ MORE: 24 tax tips for self-employed clients

Key benefits of hiring your child

For instance, Ringbauer usually advises clients to restrict their compensation for any summer jobs or other employment for their children to less than $15,000. That’s the standard deduction for 2025, the highest amount of income that, in most cases, doesn’t carry the requirement to file a return. 

In turn, the business may deduct the wages as an expense and often avoid Social Security, Medicare, Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) taxes, as well as estate and gift duties. 

And the child acquires some invaluable lessons about a day’s work, alongside potential investments such as a Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA) portfolio with a parent as the custodian or a Roth or traditional individual retirement account. But the benefits won’t accrue from brazen attempts by parents to give their kids money.

“There’s an incredible wealth of information out there and options a business owner and their children can take advantage of legally to help reduce taxes on the parents’ side,” Ringbauer said. “This could be an incredible wealth transfer, if it is done right and done appropriately.”

For advisors and their clients, that entails using the same payroll records as they do for any other employees and assigning the kids to perform actual work aligning with their hours and skills. And, of course, they need to “be careful” that they’re not running afoul of guidelines for child labor or the so-called kiddie tax on unearned income or investments, Thompson noted.

“You can’t pay your kid $15,000 over the summer for raking leaves. It has to be reasonable compensation, and you have to have them in your system,” he said. “Having the IRS come into your place just because you paid your kid some money over the summer is not a good look.”

READ MORE: The basics of S corporations — and the pitfalls for small businesses

Helpful lessons

Whether they’re working for their parents or another employer, a summer job can introduce young people to concepts such as the difference between an independent contractor and a W-2 employee and any wittholdings from their paycheck, according a recent guide to IRS rules for teens by Jill Kenady, a tax materials specialist with the University of Illinois Tax School. Documents like a tax checklist compiled by the school, and IRS releases for students and summer employees could aid parents and youngsters navigating the rules, Kenady wrote.

“Summertime is near, which means teens will start jobs, which is the initiation into adulthood,” she wrote. “These jobs offer a sense of independence along with a wonderful way to earn their own money. However, with great earnings come significant responsibilities, specifically tax responsibilities. It is your job as a tax practitioner to help teens and their parents navigate the tax laws and the impact of summer employment.”

The advantages to parents who employ their kids can pile up so high that Ringbauer said he begins speaking with business owners about the possibilities shortly after the child is born. As long as they comply with the rules, a pediatrician or a child dentist could consider hiring their kid to act as a model for advertisements or pictures on the website for the small business, he noted.

On the other hand, Ringbauer stressed that it’s important for the parents to talk through their ideas with an advisor or tax pro before putting anything in motion. The entity classifications of a business and independent contractor or W-2 employee status for the child could bring more complexity to their decisions. Then there are the more basic concerns about any potential for accidents on the job or the challenges of a parent working in the same office as their child.

READ MORE: 3 tax strategies for summer daycare, jobs and vacation rentals

Keep implications in mind

Among prospective clients, the most common problem is that it can look like a business owner is trying to simply transfer money to their child “without actual work or suitable work,” Ringbauer said.

“Eventually, they didn’t turn into my client, because they didn’t like the answers I gave them,” he said, recalling one business owner who was trying to skirt the rules. “After-the-fact errors are the biggest pitfalls, and it’s across the board.”

However, the array of potential strategies for small business owners provide “limitless reasons and opportunities to do it right, and the benefits significantly outweigh the immediate gratification of savings in dollars,” Ringbauer added.

The incentives explain why the method “makes a lot of sense” for many business owners and kids who could open their own retirement accounts, Thompson said. But there are some caveats. For example, those assets could affect possible financial aid for college or other benefit programs that take net worth into account.

“We have to look at the implications on them saving dollars under their own names,” Thompson said. “I have to be careful, because if they have too much money under their name it could ruin their benefits.”

The One Big Beautiful Tax Bill Act, as passed by the House and revised text was released Monday by the Senate, includes a number of significant tax provisions for both corporate taxpayers and nonprofits.

“Even before we saw the legislative text of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, we knew these would be the big provisions for most of our clients that they were interested to see what was going to happen,” said Jess LeDonne, director of tax technical at the Bonadio Group. “The big one that I get the most questions about right now would be the expensing of research and development costs, Section 174. That provision, specifically, allows for the temporary suspension of the amortization, so you would be able to immediately expense those costs. They also expanded that provision to include software development expenditures as well. Some of the provisions are kind of a permanent extension of some of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This one specifically is a temporary suspension of the amortization requirement. Essentially it will allow for immediate expensing of R&D costs only for tax years 2025 through 2029. This isn’t permanent, but it still is for a lot of clients a welcome potential change.”

Another significant provision involves bonus depreciation, Section 168(k). “The bill, as written as it currently sits in the Senate, would allow for 100% bonus depreciation to be reinstated,” said LeDonne. “This would again be temporary, based on the placement service date of the equipment, and it would be for a property placed in service from essentially Inauguration Day. They picked Jan. 19 of this year, and before Jan. 1, 2030.”

She sees that as a welcome extension. “That was the one we have been watching phase down already, and was set to phase out completely by 2027,” said LeDonne. 

Another provision involves the qualified business interest deduction provision. “There’s an increase there from 20% to 23% and that one does not have a sunset date, so that would be more of a permanent potential increase to that QBI deduction,” said LeDonne. 

Business interest deductions would also be extended “The last one that I’m always being asked about would be the change in the calculation for the limitation on business interest expense deductions in 163(j),” said LeDonne. “There’s a temporary reinstatement in the bill to go back to the EBITDA-based calculation. And that would be for tax years 2025 through 2029. That was the other one that we’ve been watching those specific provisions to see what’s going to happen based on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expirations and phasedowns. Those were some of the biggest business-side provisions that we’ve been asked about.”

Nonprofit tax changes

Nonprofits such as foundations, colleges and universities would also see wide-ranging impacts from the bill that was passed by the House and whose amended text was released Monday from Senate Republicans.

“The tax bill, as it’s written right now out of the House, has a number of provisions that impact the nonprofit sector,” said Aaron Fox, a managing director at CBIZ. “We will see how many of them stay in effect after the Senate is done marking up the bill. Some of the more notable provisions in the bill, to my mind, are the private foundation increase in tax rates depending on the size of their asset base. That would mark a significant departure from historic norms, where previously the tax rate was only 1.39%, and the rationale was that it was there to pay for the cost of administering foundations. But the increased rates up to 10% for the very large foundations with $5 billion or more in assets really represents a change in approach and would pay for other parts of the bill.”

The increase in tax on investment income for colleges and universities could also have a major effect on larger educational institutions. “Right now, the current rate is 1.4%, but in certain instances where the student-adjusted endowment amount goes up to $2 million or more, then colleges could be looking at significant increases in that excise tax rate,” said Fox. “That’s a pretty significant one that would not impact all of higher education, but have a pretty broad impact on the bigger colleges that have very strong balance sheets.”

Other provisions involve royalty income and transportation tax fringe benefits. 

“Royalty income change is going to be pretty broad in application, because many nonprofits, especially in the social welfare space, have royalty contract arrangements, and some of those royalties relate to name and logo licensing or sales,” said Fox. “I think that has an opportunity to have a really broad impact as well. Finally, my fourth one would be what they’re thinking about doing with transportation tax benefits and bringing back the rule that created unrelated business income tax on the provision of those benefits, which is sort of a tricky area in the tax law. It created a lot of uncertainty and difficult filings for nonprofits back in 2017 and 2018 when this idea was first put into law and then later repealed.”

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board reported that deficiency rates remain high across examination, review and audit engagements.

In the 2024 edition of its annual report on broker-dealer audits, the PCAOB found a slight improvement across firms’ examination engagements year over year. It found at least one deficiency in 17 (59%) of the 29 examination engagements it reviewed, a decrease of two from 2023. 

The largest audit firms performed 15 of the examination engagements reviewed, and deficiencies were identified in six, a decrease from the year prior. The remaining audit firms performed the other 14 engagements reviewed, and deficiencies were identified in 11, also a decrease from the year prior. 

Results were consistent year to year across firms’ review engagements. The PCAOB reviewed 64 engagements and found at least one deficiency in 27 (42%), consistent with the 2023 results. 

The largest audit firms performed 15 of the review engagements reviewed, and deficiencies were found on two, which is the same as 2023. Meanwhile, the remaining audit firms performed 49 of the review engagements, and deficiencies were identified in 25, also the same as the year prior. 

Finally, audit engagement deficiencies increased across all firms. The PCAOB found at least one deficiency in 68 (66%) of the 102 audit engagements it reviewed, an increase of 10 from 2023. 

The largest audit firms performed 31 of these audit engagements, and at least one deficiency was identified in 13 (42%0, three more than the year prior. The remaining audit firms performed the other 71 engagements, and at least one deficiency was identified in 55 (77%), an increase of seven from 2023.

The areas with the most deficiencies were revenue, journal entries and evaluating audit results. Deficiencies in revenue procedures included instances where firms did not sufficiently test whether recorded revenues were accurate, performance obligations were satisfied and disclosure requirements were met. For journal entries, firms did not consider the characteristics of potentially fraudulent journal entries when identifying and did not perform journal entry procedures. And for evaluating audit results, firms did not sufficiently evaluate whether the broker-dealer financial statements were presented fairly in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.