CPA Document Checklist: What Your CPA Wishes You Had Ready

I asked a CPA once what the difference is between her easiest client and her hardest client with the same size structure. Her answer stuck with me: "The easy one answers my document requests in a day. The hard one answers in three weeks, in seven emails, with two corrections."

Same entities. Same filings. Wildly different bills — because most of what you pay a CPA for a multi-entity structure isn't tax expertise. It's reconstruction: figuring out what your structure currently is before any actual tax work can start. A good CPA document checklist for that situation is simple but exact: your full legal entity list with each entity's name, EIN, states, and tax classification; current ownership percentages with any amendments that changed them; every K-1 matched to the right entity; and any new, dissolved, or restructured entities since last year.

This is for the people actually holding the structure together — individuals and families who self-manage LLCs, trusts, and fund positions, and the CPAs trying to prepare returns from whatever records they receive. The checklist in this piece walks through how to gather entity details, track ownership through amendments, match K-1s, and note structural changes so your records are current before they hit your CPA's desk. That matters most in the fall, when missing details turn into expensive back-and-forth, higher billing, and slower tax prep. All of it is avoidable.

This piece is the packet. Not tax advice — I'm not qualified to give it and your CPA doesn't need me to. Just the operational list of what they end up asking for, assembled from the requests that pile up every fall, so you can hand it over in one pass instead of seven emails.

The small business entity list, with the boring details

Every entity: legal name exactly as registered, EIN, state of formation, every state it's registered in beyond that, and its tax classification (disregarded, partnership, S-corp election). This sounds trivial. It's the list your CPA rebuilds from memory and last year's returns every single year, and the place where the entity you formed in March quietly fails to make it onto anyone's radar until the notice arrives.

Ownership and income tax as of now — not as of formation

Who owns what percentage of each entity, including the amendments. If an operating agreement was amended in June, the June number is the one that matters, and the amendment is the document your CPA most needs and least often gets. Layered structures compound this: if your holding company's ownership shifted, every entity under it shifted too, and someone has to do that arithmetic. Better you than a discovery process in April.

The K-1 set and who it came from

Every K-1 received this year, matched to the entity that holds the position. The matching matters as much as the documents: a folder of K-1s means your CPA plays the pairing game themselves. A list — this fund, held by this LLC, K-1 received on this date — turns an afternoon into ten minutes. If you're on extension, September 15 is when the last of these arrive, which is exactly why the matching should already be done.

Money that moved between entities

Capital contributions, distributions, and anything that moved between your own entities — with dates and amounts. Track equipment purchases separately for depreciation records, since details like date, amount, vendor, and purpose may support bonus depreciation later. Inter-entity transfers are where year-end cleanup goes to die: money that moved in February gets reconstructed from bank statements in March of the following year. A running log — even a simple one — is the difference. Note the purpose of each transfer, whether it was an owner payment or reimbursement, and whether any taxes were already paid based on the entity’s classification. If you have capital calls in the mix, the wire-from-where question is one your CPA will ask in reverse: which entity actually funded this?

What's new in your entities since last year

New entities, dissolved entities, new agreements signed, new states registered in, new fund subscriptions. Your CPA's model of your structure is last year's return. The delta is what they can't know unless you tell them — and the smaller the delta appears, the more likely something got missed.

Why I'm writing this in August

Because during tax season the packet is either thirty minutes or three weeks, and which one depends entirely on whether the record already exists. If your entity list, ownership percentages, K-1 matching, and money log are maintained as they change, assembling this is an export that keeps the packet complete and ready to file. If they're not, assembling it is archaeology — in the exact weeks your CPA is buried and billing accordingly. Keeping personal and business taxes separated but organized also makes filing faster.

If you're the CPA reading this: send it to the client you were thinking of by the second paragraph. If you're the client: your CPA has been too polite to send you this list. Consider it sent.

Rhodes maintains this packet as a side effect of existing: it reads each document as it arrives, ties it to the right entity, keeps ownership current through amendments, and holds the log of what moved. When your CPA asks, the answer is an export, not an excavation. Rhodes opens to founding members in September — 30-day free trial, founding rate locked for life. Join the list to hear when doors open.