From downtown Fairbanks and the UAF campus to North Pole, Ester, and Fox - Tides handles the books for small businesses across the Interior's only organized borough. 100% remote. Clean books every month, even at forty below.
No setup fees · Cancel anytime · 100% Remote
The Fairbanks North Star Borough is the economic center of Interior Alaska and the second-largest borough population in the state. It contains the City of Fairbanks, the City of North Pole, and a wide ring of unincorporated communities including Ester, Fox, Salcha, and Two Rivers.
Four things drive the borough economy: the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the military (Fort Wainwright and nearby Eielson Air Force Base), gold mining, and tourism - which here means aurora season, a winter business, not a summer one. Fairbanks is also the staging point for the Dalton Highway and the North Slope, so a lot of oilfield logistics runs through town.
It is a borough of small, tough, seasonal businesses: trades with a short build window, tour operators whose peak is in January, mining service companies, and the restaurants and shops that serve a garrison-and-campus town.
Wherever your business sits, we serve the whole area with the same level of service. We are 100% remote, so your exact location does not change anything about how we work.
The borough seat and the hub of Interior Alaska. Downtown, the UAF campus, Airport Way retail, and the aviation and logistics businesses staging for the North Slope.
The one place in the borough that DOES levy a general sales tax - 5.5%, with a per-sale cap. Refinery and pipeline-adjacent industry, plus a genuine Christmas tourism trade.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and the research, student housing, and service businesses that orbit it along College Road and Geist Road.
The road north toward the Fort Knox gold mine and the Dalton Highway. Heavy equipment, mining services, trucking, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor.
Historic gold-rush communities west and north of town. Home-based businesses, trades, artists, and small operators on the Parks Highway side of the borough.
Also serving Eielson, Moose Creek, Chena Hot Springs Road, and every unincorporated community in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
Serving the Interior means knowing the rhythm of a place where the aurora season is the high season, the build season is three months long, and heating fuel is a line item that can move your whole P&L.
Fairbanks was founded on an accident: in 1901 a trader named E.T. Barnette got stranded on the Chena River, and a year later gold was found nearby. The Fairbanks gold rush built the town, the Alaska Railroad connected it, and World War II and the Cold War planted the military that has anchored it ever since.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline changed everything again in the 1970s. Fairbanks was the construction staging point for the pipeline's northern half, and it remains the last real city before the Dalton Highway runs 414 miles to Deadhorse and the North Slope oil fields. If you are trucking to the Slope, your yard is probably in Fairbanks.
Today the borough runs on a four-legged stool - UAF (the University of Alaska's flagship research campus, home of the Geophysical Institute), the military (Fort Wainwright in town and Eielson AFB just south, which received the Air Force's F-35 mission), gold (the Fort Knox mine northeast of town is one of the largest producers in Alaska), and aurora tourism, which fills hotels in the dead of winter with visitors from Japan, Korea, and China. That last one is why a Fairbanks tour operator's cash flow chart looks upside down compared to the rest of the country.
Alaska has no state sales tax and no state personal income tax — which is exactly why so many business owners get Alaska tax wrong. More than 100 local jurisdictions levy their own sales tax, and the rules change borough by borough and city by city.
Alaska has no state sales tax and no state personal income tax - and the Fairbanks North Star Borough repealed its own borough sales tax back in 1987. But there is one important exception inside the borough, and a lot of Fairbanks businesses get it wrong.
Rates shown are as of 2026 and can change. Always confirm the current rate with the taxing jurisdiction before you rely on it. Tides keeps your books tax-ready and works alongside your CPA — we do not file returns for you.
Seven core services, all delivered remotely. Everything your business needs to stay financially clean and tax-ready year-round.
Our flagship service. Every transaction categorized, every account reconciled, and clean financial reports delivered to your inbox each month — without you lifting a finger. The financial foundation every Alaska business deserves.
Behind on your books? We clean up any backlog — whether it is 3 months or 3 years — so you can move forward with accurate, up-to-date records.
New business or inherited a mess? We configure QuickBooks, connect your accounts, and build a chart of accounts that actually makes sense for your industry — including landed cost and job costing where Alaska demands it.
Monthly reconciliation of every bank account and credit card — ensuring your books match your statements and no transactions fall through the cracks.
P&L statements, balance sheets, and cash flow reports delivered monthly in a format you can actually understand and act on.
We keep your AP and AR organized so you always know what is coming in, what is going out, and what is overdue.
We make sure your payroll expenses hit your books correctly and stay in sync with your payroll processor every pay period — including seasonal crews.
We understand the financial patterns of the industries that actually drive this economy — not a generic list copied from somewhere in the Lower 48.
A three-month build season, job costing, and winter cash flow
Inverted seasonality - your peak is January, not July
Equipment depreciation, camp costs, Fort Knox subcontracts
Fort Wainwright and Eielson contracts, government billing
Dalton Highway runs, fuel costs, per-mile tracking
COGS, tip payroll, alcohol excise filings
Student and military housing, bed tax on short stays
Consultants, engineers, agencies - clean monthly books
"We run aurora tours from September to March and do almost nothing the rest of the year. Every bookkeeper we tried before treated our summer like a problem instead of the off-season it is. Tides set up the books so we can actually see whether the season paid for the whole year - and they caught that we owed bed tax on the cabins we rent out. Nobody had ever told us that."
No. The borough repealed its general sales tax in 1987, and the City of Fairbanks does not levy one either. But the City of North Pole does - a 5.5% general sales tax with a cap on the taxable amount per sale. So within one borough you have Fairbanks with no sales tax and North Pole with one. If you sell or install in North Pole, that matters. Rates are current as of 2026 - confirm with the City of North Pole.
Probably, depending on what you sell. The borough and city levy excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and hotel room rentals even without a general sales tax. Bars, hotels, aurora lodges, and short-term rental operators all have filings. The bed tax is the one that surprises people who list a cabin on a booking site and assume Alaska means tax-free.
That is a Fairbanks specialty and we plan for it. Aurora tourism means your revenue peaks between September and March while your costs run year-round. We build the books so you can see cash runway through the shoulder season, track the deferred revenue on bookings taken months out, and know before June whether the season actually paid for the year.
Yes - that compressed season is exactly why job costing matters so much in the Interior. We track cost per job, keep subcontractor 1099 records straight, and make sure materials ordered in March against a job that closes in August land in the right period. The short season means one mispriced job is a much bigger share of your year here than it would be in the Lower 48.
No. If you do not have QuickBooks Online, we set it up as part of onboarding. If you already have an account, we connect to it and clean it up as needed. We also connect Puzzle.io for real-time dashboards and an instant snapshot of your books before regular monthly service begins.
Pricing is based on your monthly transaction volume, not your zip code. Most small businesses land between $395 and $895 per month. You get an exact quote during your free consultation - no guesswork, no setup fees.
Alaska does not border another state, so we do not pretend to serve one. We serve Alaska — from Southeast to the Interior to the Y-K Delta.
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation. Tell us about your business and we will give you a clear picture of where your books stand and what it costs to fix them.
No setup fees · Cancel anytime · First month guaranteed
Official government resources for registering, filing, and staying compliant. Tides handles your books; these help with the rest.