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Our tax specialists experienced working with franchisees, franchisors, and multi-unit businesses can help you find opportunities to minimize your tax obligations. Whether you have nexus issues or want to investigate tax credits like cost segregation, you can depend on our tax team for advice.

Tax Consulting for Franchisors

Plante Moran’s tax consulting experts can help you minimize franchise taxes

Many franchisees, franchisors, and multi-unit businesses aren’t using all of the tax minimization techniques available to them. Plante Moran’s team of tax experts specialize in helping you find these opportunities and apply them to maximize impact on your business. 

Cost segregation: an underused technique by franchisors

Although cost segregation has been a viable tax minimization technique for many years, many franchise industry organizations and multi-unit entities aren’t leveraging the benefits. Cost segregation allows companies to treat certain construction costs as components of machinery or equipment rather than as part of the building itself. This, in turn, allows companies to depreciate these costs over a five- or seven-year period versus the traditionally longer periods associated with real estate. Plante Moran’s tax team can help organizations segregate fixed assets into their appropriate depreciable lives, often saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. 

Multi-state taxation strategies for franchisors, franchisees, and multi-unit entities

State and local tax issues are inherently complex. Our tax team can help organizations with multi-state locations identify and handle all of their many tax concerns. Whether the organization is facing a sales, use, or property tax problem or just trying to determine which states to file income tax returns, we can help you develop the right tax-planning strategy to ensure you’re paying what you owe—no more, no less. 

Franchise Tax credit opportunities

Our tax consulting experts stay up to date on the latest tax credit opportunities. The Work Opportunity Credit, for example, is applicable to anyone in either the retail or service arena. This credit affords companies at least $2,400 per employee (assuming certain criteria are met). Many franchise industry organizations and multi-unit entities believe this process to be cumbersome; although it’s complex, it’s become a much easier process over the past few years. Plante Moran’s tax experts can guide you through it.

Franchise Tax accounting methods

Deciding whether to defer or accelerate income and expenses can have a significant effect on a company’s tax position. Our tax experts can help you determine the right accounting method for the right situation, saving significant dollars in the process.

Two Men and a Truck is a franchisor that believes in total transparency. That is why we put so much emphasis on the quality of our FDD (franchise disclosure document) and even include Item 19 (earnings claims). We also realize our success depends heavily on the success of our franchisees so we invest in preparing them for the challenges they are going to face. For most franchisees, their business income will be filtered through to their personal balance sheets. In other words, the sustainability of their businesses and the security of their families are very closely connected. That is why we emphasize the need for a good business advisor and an experienced wealth manager. For an efficient and effective integrated approach, we share our personal example. The specialists at Plante Moran have gained our trust. They do our business audits and estate and personal tax planning.

Melanie Bergeron, Chair
Two Men and a Truck International, Inc.