Registered tax & consulting firm · Accountancy Board of Ohio
Ledger & Lane is a four-person CPA firm on West Fifth Avenue in Grandview Heights. We keep 118 Central Ohio businesses and 240 households in compliance across Franklin, Delaware and Licking counties — with fixed fees quoted in the engagement letter before any work starts.
Every form on this site is read by a licensed CPA, not a queue. We reply within one business day.
01
We do not sell hours. Each engagement below has a defined deliverable, a named preparer, and a fee agreed before fieldwork. If something falls outside scope — an IRS notice mid-year, an entity added — we quote it separately in writing.
Forms 1120-S, 1065 and 1120, plus the Ohio IT 1140 / IT 4708 / IT 4738 pass-through filings and city returns for Columbus, Dublin, Westerville and RITA/CCA municipalities.
Form 1040 with Schedules A, C, E and F. Heavy Schedule E work — Clintonville doubles, Olde Towne East rentals, OSU-adjacent short-term rentals and their depreciation schedules.
Month-end close by the 12th: bank and card reconciliations, adjusting entries, chart-of-accounts cleanup, cash-to-accrual conversion. QuickBooks Online and Xero, both certified in-house.
Semi-monthly or biweekly runs through Gusto, with 941/940 deposits, Ohio withholding, SD 101 school-district withholding, W-2s and 1099-NECs filed by January 31.
CP2000, CP14 and exam defense under Form 2848. Unfiled returns, delinquent 941s and trust fund recovery penalty exposure, penalty abatement, and Ohio assessments referred to the Attorney General.
Three working sessions a year — May, August, November. Projection, safe-harbor estimates, reasonable compensation study for S-corp owners, §179 versus bonus depreciation, QBI positioning.
02
Ranges below are what Central Ohio clients actually paid in the last twelve months. Your number is fixed in the engagement letter after a 30-minute scoping call — it does not move unless the scope does, and then only in writing.
| Engagement | Basis | Fee range | Typical client |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual return · 1040 + Ohio + city | Flat, per year | $385 – $720 | W-2 household, one city return |
| 1040 with Schedule C or E | Flat, per year | $690 – $1,450 | Contractor; 1–4 rental doors |
| S-corp or partnership return · 1120-S / 1065 | Flat, per year | $1,250 – $2,900 | $400k–$3M revenue, one state |
| Monthly bookkeeping & close | Monthly retainer | $450 – $1,600 | Under 350 transactions/month |
| Payroll, up to 25 employees | Monthly retainer | $180 – $420 | Two pay runs per month |
| Quarterly tax planning | Annual, 3 sessions | $1,200 – $2,400 | Owner taking distributions |
| S-election & reasonable comp study | One-time project | $1,450 flat | Sch. C over ~$90k net |
| IRS notice response · CP2000 / CP14 | Flat, per notice | $550 – $1,900 | Matching or balance-due notice |
| Exam or collections representation | Hourly, retainer first | $295 / hour | Field or office exam |
| Unfiled returns cleanup | Per year filed | $495 – $1,100 | 2–6 delinquent years |
03
Nine dates drive almost everything a Columbus business owner owes. We work backward from them and tell you what we need three weeks ahead — in an email with a checklist, not a phone call in April.
Central Ohio jurisdictions
Columbus levies a 2.5% municipal income tax, and anyone with an unincorporated business or rental property inside the city has to file — profit or loss, Schedule C, E or F — through the city's CRISP portal. Meanwhile Worthington and Grandview run their own rules, several villages are administered by RITA, others by CCA, and a JEDD can put a withholding obligation on a job site your payroll system has never heard of.
We keep a working file on each municipality our clients touch: Dublin, Bexley, Gahanna, Hilliard, New Albany, Powell, Upper Arlington, Westerville, Grove City, Reynoldsburg, Delaware and Marysville. When a crew starts working across a line, we tell you before the withholding is wrong, not after the assessment arrives.
04
Ledger & Lane registered with the Accountancy Board of Ohio as a tax and consulting firm in 2011. Both partners hold active Ohio permits under ORC 4701.10 and complete CPE every renewal cycle. We carry professional liability and cyber coverage, and we are an authorized IRS e-file provider.
Tax partner · Ohio permit since 2004
Signs every business return. Fourteen years on multi-entity real estate and trades contractors, including WIP schedules and percentage-of-completion for six Central Ohio builders.
Representation partner · Ohio permit since 2001
Handles exams, collections and unfiled-return cleanups under Form 2848. Nine years at a regional firm's controversy group before opening the Grandview office.
Client accounting manager
Runs the monthly close for 61 businesses. QuickBooks Online Advanced ProAdvisor and Xero certified; owns the 12th-business-day deadline.
Payroll & compliance specialist
Processes 2,100+ pay runs a year through Gusto, plus 941/940 deposits, SD 101 school-district withholding and Ohio BWC true-ups.
05
Client names withheld under our confidentiality terms. Figures are actual, rounded to the nearest hundred dollars.
Hilliard · HVAC contractor · 9 employees
Schedule C net was $214k. We filed the 2553 with late-election relief under Rev. Proc. 2013-30, set officer wages at $86,000 off a documented comp study, and rebuilt payroll so the SD 101 withholding matched the owner's Dublin school district.
Clintonville · six rental doors
The owner had filed federally but never filed with Columbus, where a rental requires a return even at a loss. We reconstructed Schedule E by property, filed 2018–2023 through CRISP, and requested abatement on two penalty layers.
Grandview Heights · dental practice
The notice treated an equipment trade-in as unreported gain. We filed Form 2848, produced the fixed-asset ledger and §179 history, and responded in eleven days. IRS accepted the adjustment without an exam.
West Fifth Avenue · Grandview Heights
The office is a second-floor walk-up with four desks, a conference table, and parking behind the building. Drop-off hours run 8:30 to 5:00, Monday through Thursday, and until noon on Friday. From January 15 to April 15 we also hold Saturday morning appointments, 9:00 to 1:00, by reservation.
Prefer to stay remote? Every client gets an encrypted portal, and we run signature and payment through it. Roughly two-thirds of our households never come in at all — but the door is open, and the coffee is unremarkable and free.
06
We look at last year's return, a trial balance, and transaction volume. Thirty minutes on the phone is usually enough to land a fixed number, which then goes in the engagement letter with the scope and the preparer named.
That is the single most common reason clients move. We cap tax-season intake at 40 new returns so the one-business-day reply window holds in April as well as August.
Yes. The city requires a return from anyone with an unincorporated business or rental property in Columbus regardless of profit. Loss years still get filed — and filing them preserves the loss.
Regularly. We take a transition file, clean the chart of accounts, reconcile back to the last filed return, and quote the cleanup separately so it never hides inside the monthly fee.
No. We are registered as a tax and consulting firm, not a peer review firm. If you need an audit, review or a 401(k) plan audit, we will refer you to two Columbus firms that do and stay on as your tax advisor.
Sometimes. Below roughly $90,000 of Schedule C net, the payroll and filing cost usually eats the savings. We run the numbers both ways and show you the arithmetic before you decide.
Consultation request
No obligation and no fee for the first 30-minute call. If we are not the right firm — wrong size, wrong specialty, attest work — we will say so on that call and point you somewhere better.
