Title & Escrow Companies Bookkeeping in New Hampshire

Escrow and trust account requirements in New Hampshire are set by state law and by the underwriters you are appointed with, and they typically cover how funds are held, how frequently the account is reconciled, and what records must exist for each file. The reconciliation that satisfies all of them is the three-way: escrow bank balance, escrow book balance, and the sum of the individual file ledgers, agreeing at one point in time. Two of the three will frequently agree while the third does not, which is precisely why the third exists. The entity is registered with the New Hampshire Secretary of State, and because New Hampshire levies no statewide general sales tax there is no revenue account to maintain alongside it — one fewer New Hampshire registration to let lapse. We keep that reconciliation current and documented; whether it meets your specific New Hampshire obligation is a determination for you, your counsel, and your underwriter.

New Hampshire levies a real estate transfer or deed tax at closing, which means every file passes tax collected from the parties through your escrow account to a recording authority. It is pass-through in the purest sense — never income, never expense, simply money moving across your ledger — and files that run it through revenue can overstate a title company's income by a multiple. Recording fees and any state or county surcharge behave the same way, and the settlement statement is the source document that has to reconcile to what actually left the account.

Registering to do business in New Hampshire runs through the New Hampshire Secretary of State and employer accounts through the New Hampshire Department of Employment Security. Because New Hampshire has no sales tax account to maintain, there is one less registration to let lapse than in most states.

Beyond sales tax, New Hampshire imposes the Business Profits Tax and Business Enterprise Tax. The Business Profits Tax is levied on business income, and the Business Enterprise Tax on a base of wages, interest, and dividends paid — so a business can owe the BET while showing no profit at all. Both start at fairly modest levels of activity. That sits alongside registration with the New Hampshire Secretary of State, and it is the obligation most often missed by businesses who concluded from the absence of a sales tax that New Hampshire asks nothing of them. It is accrued as it builds rather than discovered at year end.