Anyone can tell you
What the rules say
The elections, deductions, and credits available to a multi-location owner. That part is public.
For Franchise Buyers & Owners
Two franchise locations or ten…
One tax plan for everything you own.
We write one tax plan that covers all of your locations, your personal return, your home and rentals, and the loans you used to open each unit. Darin has bought and sold a business himself, so he plans it the way an owner would.
Darin PiersonThe CPA for Franchise Buyers & Owners
Franchise owners are business buyers too.
A lot of franchise owners set out to buy a business. Somewhere in the search, a franchise turned out to be the better route: a proven model, a brand, a playbook. They still did the deal like a buyer, and they still think like one.
If you own two, three, or four locations, odds are you bought at least one of them. That means purchase price, goodwill, equipment, and an opening balance sheet, all handled correctly or not. Those are our questions. We've been asking them for years.
Odds are if you have two or three or four locations, you probably bought one or two of them.
Darin Pierson, CPA
What we look at across your franchise
Six places where multi-location owners most often have something open, and where a decision made before December 31 still counts.
01
How your locations are held
One entity or several, which ones elect S corp status, and how owner pay flows through each. The structure that made sense at location one often doesn't at location three.
02
Purchase price and royalties
What you paid for each location, how it was allocated, how the initial fee is being amortized, and how royalties and ad fund are being treated.
03
Equipment and build-out
Ovens, vehicles, signage, leasehold improvements. Which to expense now, which to depreciate, and what that does to this year versus next.
04
How you funded the locations
SBA debt, retirement rollovers, home equity, and seller notes each carry their own tax treatment. We check that the interest and basis are landing where they should.
05
Credits and incentives
Starting a 401(k) plan comes with a tax credit, and depending on where you operate there may be others. We check which ones apply to you.
06
Estimated payments and timing
What you should be paying in each quarter across all entities and personally, so there's no surprise in April and no penalty for guessing.
What one plan covers
Every locationAnd the entity or entities that hold them
Your house and rentalsMortgage interest, depreciation, and how they sit next to the business
Other businessesSide ventures, partnerships, anything else with a K-1
How you funded itSBA loans, HELOCs, retirement rollovers, family money
What's nextThe next location, a sale, bringing in a partner
One plan for every location, and the rest of your life.
A tax plan for one entity misses the point. Your locations, your home, your rentals, the loans you took to open each unit, and the plan for next year all pull on the same return. We plan them as one picture, because that's how the IRS sees them.
It isn't just a tax plan for the business. It's your whole life, on one page, with the decisions in the right order.
Why experience matters
We've already seen how your plan plays out.
Software and AI can tell you what the tax rules say. They can't tell you what happened when an owner with your setup followed them. We compare your setup with what we've seen work for our other clients who bought businesses, with the same kinds of structures and the same SBA loans. We know which moves held up, which ones the IRS pushed back on, and which ones cost more than they saved. Your plan starts from that.
Only experience tells you
What actually worked
Which of those moves held up for owners like you through a few year ends, and which ones drew an IRS letter.
What you get
A plan built on both
What to change, what to leave alone, and why, based on what we've watched happen, not what a model predicts.
End of Year Offer
One plan. One fee.
One plan. One fee.
Every location.
A written year-end tax plan covering each location, each entity, your personal return, and everything in the section above. One fee for all of it. It is not priced per location.
What goes in
Location 1
Location 2
Location 3
+ your house, rentals, other businesses, and how you funded it all
→
What comes out
$4,000
One written tax plan
Two locations or ten, same fee
Not per location
What you get
A written plan covering every entity and your personal return, delivered before December 31 so the moves can still be made this year. Your current accountant can file from it. You don't have to switch.
Find less than $8,000, pay nothing
If the plan identifies less than $8,000 in tax savings across everything you own, we refund the full $4,000. A refund to your card or account, not a credit toward future work.
Book by December 31 to have the plan in hand before year end
Book a free 30-minute call
We'll tell you on the call whether the plan makes sense for you
Buying another franchise location?
Resale units come with a seller's story and a seller's numbers. Before you sign, we check that the two match. Start with a free deal screen, and if the deal warrants it, we'll scope a Quality of Earnings review sized for it.
Before you sign for an existing unit
- ✓Do the bank deposits match the sales reported to the franchisor?
- ✓Are royalties and ad fund current, or is there a balance you'd inherit?
- ✓What does labor cost once the owner stops working the floor?
- ✓How much term is left on the franchise agreement and the lease?
The CPA you'll work with
Darin Pierson has been the buyer.
He's a licensed CPA with 11 years of experience, formerly at Ernst & Young. He spent about nine months searching full-time before he bought an e-commerce business, and he later sold it. He knows what it's like to sign for a business, operate it the next morning, and find out what the books really say.
11 yrsLicensed CPA, incl. Ernst & Young
3 seatsBuyer, operator, and seller of his own business
NationalWe work with franchise owners in every state
Book a free 30-minute call
Tell us how many locations you have and how you funded them. We'll tell you what we'd look at first.
No charge, no obligation.