NEW YORK – For some small-business owners, income tax filing season feels like a slow-motion train wreck.

These are often owners who tend to be disorganized and unable to keep good records. Instead of keeping their companies’ books with a small business accounting program, they use a stack of overstuffed file folders or worse, boxes and shopping bags.

There’s another group of owners who end up in trouble at tax time. They haven’t been paying attention to things like letters from the IRS or state tax authorities. Or they don’t stay on top of filing deadlines. They don’t listen to the advice of their accountants.

These owners still have time to avoid a train wreck and avoid being in a similar situation a year from now.

Software helps

Tax time is pretty easy for small business owners who use accounting software to keep the books. At some point early in the year, they just e-mail records for the previous year to their accountants or tax preparers.

For the disorganized, the season can be torturous as they sort through piles of receipts, checks, credit card statements and invoices. It can also be extremely expensive if they hand the mess over to a CPA who’ll charge several hundreds of dollars an hour to clean it up.

Mark Toolan, a certified public accountant in Exton, Pa., has advice that starts with: “Grab hold of yourself.” Then invest in some small-business accounting software and input the information from all those bits of paper.

The reason many small business owners have such haphazard record-keeping is they’re so busy with all the other facets of running the business.

These owners need to get some help. One option is to hire a bookkeeper. Or, as John Evans, a partner with the accounting firm BDO Seidman in New York, suggests, taking on an intern, perhaps an accounting student from a local college.

Evans also recommends using your bookkeeper or intern to help you get tax forms like 1099s for independent contractors in the mail.

“They will do what you hate to do,” he said.

There are more reasons for being organized than avoiding tax-time hassles. Most important is that the more haphazard you are, the less of a handle you have on your company’s finances.

Read your mail

Toolan says many small-business owners never even open letters from tax agencies. They put the letters aside and at tax time, hand them to their CPAs.

It sounds obvious, right: open your mail. But not everyone does it, and in the process owners miss notices about mistakes on a tax return, questions about employment taxes or actual bills for taxes. Not addressed, those issues can lead to late payment penalties and interest.

Of course, this is Monday-morning quarterbacking for anyone who’s been sitting on such letters. The answer is to open the envelopes right away, and deal with the question or problem.