The owners of small construction companies often fill several different roles within the company: salesperson, estimator, production carpenter, errand and delivery person, bookkeeper, and administrative assistant. Add the time necessary to write a business plan, develop policies, and perform other owner functions, and it's easy to see why many construction owners work 60 to 70-hour weeks. Obviously, owner time is the oil that makes the company run. When job costing, however, construction owners too often fail to count their time against specific jobs. This skews profit and overhead calculations, both of which will appear to be higher than they really are. More important, at least as far as the IRS is concerned, owner labor also affects tax reporting, depending on whether
