Anyone who is an accountant, or has started a business:

If I'm starting a new business and will probably officially incorporate in May 2008, can I deduct business expenses I incurred in say, Jan - April 2008?

 

you should get an accountant. The money invested is will be returned many folds. Ask him/her on what legal strategies to minimize your tax. Turbo tax will does not have the capability to help in that way.

 

you can deduct the expenses as a sole proprietor, but not as a corporation. Include those deductions in your personal tex return.

 

Nope, expenses before you open the doors have to be capitalized and amortized.

 

Correct!

A incorporation that did not exist could not have expenses. I believe you will, in effect, pay taxes almost as though the two registrations are separate - though your overall income and allowable limits may consider the combined numbers of the two.

 

If you aren't bringing in a huge amount of money, I would advise against paying for an accountant. I used turbo tax to file my personal and small business return together and it worked like a champ. All you need to do is keep receipts and track everything (not hard).

 

When getting into corporate taxation it can really be cumbersome to handle taxes yourself.

By working with a corporate tax accountant they can file your personal and corporate documents together and appropriately manipulate things to ensure maximum benefit to you (while obviously abiding the laws ((unless you pay extra jk)) ).

There are so many things to consider, many of which TurboTax, QuickTax, etc did not even think of for me. If I had not done all kind of research to find out what I could and could not deduct or include on my taxes filing, I would've lost several thousand dollars. In the end I was able to manually pull up the forms in the software, but without knowledge of what form to search for I would've been SOL. And that's just on a personal tax level.