Sudbury taxes what your business owns, not what it earns.
A house here pays $14.27 per thousand and a business pays $21.54 on everything it owns — so the number that decides your bill is the one you file yourself, on the Form of List. Nine and a half miles due west, in Hudson.
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Four things Sudbury decided that your accountant did not
Three of them are the town's own paperwork, on the town's own schedule. The fourth is a discount Sudbury prices every December and does not grant.
Your equipment is taxed at half again the rate of the house it sits in.
Sudbury votes a split rate, and has every year for eighteen years. For FY2026 it is $21.54 per thousand on commercial, industrial and personal property against $14.27 on residential. The town's own assessors put the whole commercial class at about 7% of the taxable value and about 10% of the taxes collected — everything Sudbury's businesses own in equipment comes to barely half a percent of the town. The rate is settled in December and you cannot argue with it. The only number left is the one you put on the Form of List, due March 1st, and that number comes off your books.
You are not allowed to sign this one at your own desk.
The Town Clerk takes the Business Certificate at 322 Concord Road — $50 for four years, $25 to amend one. The instruction that catches people is on the same page: every signature has to be made in front of a notary, the Town Clerk or the Assistant Town Clerk, and the town says in as many words not to sign the certificate before you are standing in front of one of the three. Filing it is also not permission to trade. Sudbury says so on that page, and sends you to the Zoning Bylaws and to the Building Inspector on (978) 440-5421 first.
One customer a day. That is the whole allowance.
Nearly 93% of what Sudbury taxes is residential, so a great many of this town's businesses are inside those houses — and the zoning bylaw lets them be, as of right, in every residential district. Section 2330 sets the price. It has to run entirely inside the dwelling and entirely by the people living there, show no exterior sign of existing, store nothing outside — a commercial vehicle in the driveway counts — and bring no more than one customer round trip a day to the address. And it has to be registered with the Zoning Enforcement Officer. Take on one employee, or put up a nameplate, and you are into Section 2340 and a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals.
And the 10% nobody in this town gets.
Massachusetts lets a community take up to 10% off the assessed value of a commercial property worth under $1,000,000 where the businesses in it employ ten or fewer people in total. Sudbury's assessors price it every December — 46 properties qualified for FY2026, out of 187 commercial accounts, worth an average of about $935 a year each — and Sudbury is not on the list of communities that grant it. Their argument against is the part worth knowing: the exemption attaches to the building, so most small businesses here miss it for renting space in one worth more than a million, and would then pay the higher rate that funds it. Which side of that line you are on is a headcount question, and the headcount has already been filed.
Four departments, four calendars, and not one of them is going to ring you.Knowing when they fall is the job you are hiring for.
What the bookkeeping covers, month to month. Sudbury is one town on that list.
Nobody at Town Hall can help you with these
Everything above is settled inside Sudbury. These three are settled on Beacon Hill, they read the same in every town on the list, and two of them are owed by you rather than by the company — which is the part that catches a business of one or two people.
The Wage Act does not get smaller because the payroll does.
One part-time assistant, paid late once, is the whole exposure. Somebody who works two weeks and leaves is owed everything they earned on the day they go — not on the next run, not when you next sit down with the books. The Supreme Judicial Court settled that in 2022 and left no room in it: an employer who pays late owes treble the wages, the interest and the employee’s lawyer, and having paid up before anyone sued is not a defence. Accrued vacation counts as wages. There is no small-employer version of this.
Source: M.G.L. c. 149 § 148 · Reuter v. City of Methuen, SJC-13121 (2022)The person who does what you do is not a contractor.
Massachusetts starts from the assumption that your contractor is an employee, and prong B of the three-part test decides it: the work has to sit outside the usual course of your business. A consultancy that subcontracts consulting does not clear it. Nor does a trainer paying trainers, a studio paying instructors, or a practice paying another practitioner on a 1099 to see its own clients. It is the commonest arrangement in a town of small professional firms, and it is the one the test was written for.
Source: M.G.L. c. 149 § 148B — the three-prong testThe one filing that never sends you a bill.
Every Massachusetts LLC and corporation owes the Secretary of the Commonwealth an annual report, and it comes due on the anniversary of the day the company was formed — a date that matches no quarter end and sits in nobody’s calendar. $500 by post, $520 online. There is no late fee, which sounds generous and is exactly the problem: no fee means no notice, so nothing ever arrives to remind you. Miss it twice running and the state can dissolve the company without telling you, and you learn about it at a closing, a lease signing, or the first form that asks whether you are in good standing. Getting it back costs $100 on top of every report you skipped.
Source: Secretary of the Commonwealth · M.G.L. c. 156C § 70
You work directly with the person doing the work.
The person who reviews your books is the person who answers the phone — Certified Bookkeeper, IRS Authorized e-File Agent and Notary Public, working from Hudson, nine and a half miles due west of Sudbury. One desk, one person, and nothing handed along to somebody you have never spoken to.
The parts owners actually feel
The things that change once somebody is actually keeping the record.
Clarity, then growth.
Green Books Inc works with established businesses whose finances fell behind through lack of time, guidance, or proper systems. Nothing here starts with a lecture about how far behind you are.
Book a consultationThree steps, no lecture.
- 01Tell me where things standA conversation about the business, the books, and how far behind they are — if they are.
- 02Catch up and clean upWhatever is outstanding gets brought current and organised before anything ongoing starts.
- 03Keep it currentMonthly bookkeeping, payroll and filings, so nothing has to be reconstructed later.
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Asked and answered
My books are months — or years — behind. Can you still help?
Yes. Catch-up and clean-up work is a core part of what I do. Many of the businesses I work with are established and doing good work, but their finances fell behind through lack of time, guidance, or proper systems. My approach is structured, detail-driven, and always judgment-free.
Do you work with clients in Spanish?
Yes. I am a bilingual professional serving Massachusetts, and I work with clients in both English and Spanish so that communication is clear at every step.
Can you prepare both personal and business tax returns?
Yes. I work with individuals and businesses to prepare and file returns in compliance with federal and state requirements, filed electronically through the IRS e-file system.
I am starting a new business. Can you help me set it up?
Yes. I assist with LLC formation, business registrations, and setting up the foundational systems a new business needs to operate properly from the start.
Do you offer notary services on their own?
Yes. Notary services are available by appointment for both personal and business documents, handled confidentially and in accordance with state requirements.
Where are you based, and who do you work with?
The office is at 131 Coolidge St Ste A3, Hudson, MA 01749, and I work with businesses and individuals across Massachusetts.