Bookkeeping, Tax Preparation Support and Virtual CFO Services for Chicago Businesses

Illinois taxes corporations at a flat 7 percent of net income, on top of a separate 2.5 percent Personal Property Replacement Tax that corporations also owe, for a combined 9.5 percent. Partnerships, trusts and S corporations owe PPRT too, at 1.5 percent, even though their income otherwise passes through to the owners' personal returns. Both rates are set by the Illinois Department of Revenue and have held steady for several years, but confirm the current figures on tax.illinois.gov before filing.

Sales tax is where Chicago gets complicated. Illinois's state rate is 6.25 percent, and Cook County, the City of Chicago and the Regional Transportation Authority each add their own layer on top, taking the combined general merchandise rate in the city to 10.25 percent, one of the highest in the country. A business selling into the suburbs needs a different combined rate for almost every municipality, which is why we track nexus and rate at the location level rather than assuming one number covers the metro.

Chicago also runs its own home-rule taxes that apply only to specific activities: a Personal Property Lease Transaction Tax on equipment and software leases (with a separate, lower rate for cloud and nonpossessory computer leases), an Amusement Tax on ticketed and streamed entertainment, and city and MPEA restaurant taxes layered on top of the sales tax for food and beverage sales. Rates on these narrower taxes move more often than the corporate and sales tax rates; confirm the current rate for your business type with the City of Chicago Department of Finance before we build it into your chart of accounts.

A new Illinois entity registers for state tax accounts through MyTax Illinois, the Department of Revenue's online portal, which is also where sales tax, withholding and PPRT accounts get set up. Businesses that lease, sell tickets to entertainment or sell food and drink inside city limits register separately for the relevant Chicago home-rule taxes.

Federal deadlines drive the calendar and Illinois follows them closely: calendar-year C corporations file by April 15, S corporations and partnerships by March 15 (March 16 in 2026, since the 15th falls on a Sunday), and individual returns by April 15. Illinois grants the same automatic extension length as the IRS when a federal extension is filed. We prepare the books and the supporting schedules on that same calendar; the return itself is filed by you or by a credentialed preparer, and any representation in front of a tax authority goes through a licensed tax agent, never through Finbryn directly. Ecommerce sellers and marketplace operators should also confirm the current federal and Illinois 1099-K reporting thresholds with the IRS and the Illinois Department of Revenue each year, since those thresholds have moved more than once in recent years and change what payment processors report on your behalf.

Professional services firms headquartered in the Loop and River North need clean project-level accounting and partner draw tracking. Third-party logistics and trucking operators staged around O'Hare and the interstate corridors run high transaction volumes and need per-load costing that survives a driver turnover cycle. Manufacturers in the western and southern suburbs carry inventory, work-in-process and fixed asset schedules that a generic bookkeeping template does not fit.

Restaurant and hospitality groups downtown and across the neighborhoods deal with tip reporting, multiple sales tax layers and thin margins where a reconciliation error shows up fast. Medical and dental practices need bookkeeping that separates patient receivables from insurance reimbursement timing. Fintech, payments and trading-adjacent firms clustered near LaSalle Street need books that hold up under investor or lender scrutiny. We also see a steady flow of early-stage companies coming out of 1871 and TechNexus that need their first real chart of accounts before a seed round closes.

Documents move through a secure client portal with bank-grade access controls; we do not ask you to email statements or tax IDs as attachments. Bank and card feeds connect directly into QuickBooks Online or Xero, so reconciliation does not wait on a forwarded statement.

Our delivery team handles the recurring work, and everything that reaches you has had a senior review first, so the numbers you see are checked before they land in your inbox. Nothing about the arrangement implies a Chicago office or local staff; it is a remote engagement for Chicago businesses, contracted in the United States through Northlane Solutions Inc, and we say so plainly rather than let the marketing imply otherwise.

Most Chicago clients land on QuickBooks Online or Xero, with Gusto, ADP or Rippling running payroll and Bill.com, Melio or Ramp handling bills and expenses. Ecommerce and retail sellers add Dext or Hubdoc for receipt capture and A2X for marketplace payout reconciliation. We set up and migrate all of these; if you are already running one, we work inside the file you have rather than asking you to switch.

On the banking side we regularly reconcile accounts at Chase, BMO, Wintrust and Byline Bank, along with the national online banks that startups and ecommerce sellers favor. Whatever bank feed your accounts connect to, we build the reconciliation around it rather than asking you to change banks to fit our process.

Rates are published on the pricing page rather than quoted after a sales call. Most single-entity Chicago businesses land in the Essentials or Growth plan depending on transaction volume and whether payroll and accounts payable sit inside the engagement; multi-entity operators, franchise groups and businesses with heavier transaction counts get a Scale quote instead of a flat plan. A separate White-Label plan exists for Chicago accounting firms that want extra bookkeeping capacity during busy season without hiring for it directly.

The calculator on the pricing page gives a working estimate before you ever book a call, using your transaction volume, entity count and whether you need payroll or AP handled alongside the core bookkeeping. Whatever plan you land on, the exact terms, including billing frequency and cancellation, are set out in your engagement letter once it is confirmed, not negotiated case by case over email. See how Chicago compares with New York and San Francisco, or browse every metro on the locations hub.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks pay for bookkeeping, accounting and staff-accountant roles by metro area, including Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, and its published Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data consistently shows this metro running above the national average for these occupations, once you add payroll tax, health benefits and software seats on top of a base salary. Confirm the current figures for the specific role you are pricing against at bls.gov before comparing numbers, since OEWS updates its metro tables each year.

A Finbryn plan replaces that hire, or covers the gap between what a growing Chicago business needs done each month and what one internal bookkeeper can realistically cover alone, without a recruiting cycle, a training ramp, or a coverage gap when someone takes vacation or leaves. The tradeoff runs the other way too: a single dedicated person who sits in your office every day, answers the phone, and handles ad hoc requests the moment they land is not something a remote engagement replicates, and we would rather say that upfront than let you find out later.

Book a call through the contact page. On that call we scope which plan fits, whether you need payroll or accounts payable folded into the engagement, and which industries or software your business already runs on. From there we open a file, set up or connect to read-only access on your bank feeds and accounting software, and confirm the plan and scope in your engagement letter before any work starts.

First month's numbers come back inside the software you already use, QuickBooks Online or Xero in most cases, reconciled and reviewed by a senior team member before you see them, with an open-items list flagging anything we still need from you to close remaining gaps. There is no in-person meeting requirement anywhere in that process.