LLC

The right entity can reduce taxes for small business owners while reducing legal liability. Careful consideration between organizing as an LLC or an S-corp lays a solid foundation.

There are no drawbacks to separating the real estate and business into separate LLCs that I’m aware of. Every attorney I’ve ever spoken with agrees on this. Real estate should never be held inside an S corporation or LLC treated as such. Any tax negatives are easily resolved with elections.

The issues involved with combining real estate and a business under an S corporation are many. Legally you limit your option and put asserts unnecessarily at risk. The tax problems are hard or impossible to resolve without inflicting additional tax pain.

Structured properly your business and assets can enjoy legal protections while basking in the light of lower taxes.

Two and a half years ago when I started this blog I had a vision for what it would become. The original primary goal was to encourage readers to slide a chair around behind my desk and view the world from my side of the desk. I’ve always found the world interesting from my perch. Things I would never know or experience were front and center due to my position in the world. It all fascinated me.

Before long I expanded my vision. I wanted this blog to be a sort of personal journal to my children. When I’m gone (and hopefully while I’m still here) my girls can reference the thoughts of their dad. Some things are modified to protect the guilty (as I like to say), but the flavor is all there. Who and what I am is on these pages. This is the most real me I’ve ever presented. It took decades of writing, learning and growing to reach the point where I was comfortable exposing myself to the world.

Bloggers often miss many opportunities when organizing their taxes. Writing on a regular schedule occupies a large part of the creative artist’s time. Taxes frequently become an afterthought.

Over the last two year several bloggers have approached me to review their tax situation.

Starting a business is an act of love and courage. Enjoying a task soon becomes a business. You might start working out of the home or buy a small store front. The previous hobby now commands more of your precious time. A business is about more than making money. Small business owners love the work they do and get paid to do it. Awesome! Then reality sets in.

When I was a sophomore in high school I fell in love with the stock market crash of 1929. The teacher said economists don’t know what really caused the crash. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was probably the trigger but many other events also played a role. I could not let it go. Every book in the school and public library in my small town was in my paw, devoured for any tidbit of information on why things went so wrong in 1929. I never found a definitive answer, but I did learn a lot about economics.

The tax advantages of organizing as an S corporation or an LLC electing to be treated as an S corporation are significant. Self-employment taxes disappear with the corporate structure and with an S corporation there is no income tax either as all profit flows to the owners. As with all good things, there are pitfalls. The S corporation is no different.

Most small businesses in my office use the S corporation structure. There are a few rules that need to be followed, like the owners paying themselves a reasonable wage. The wage issue is easy to handle; I require S corporation clients to do their payroll in my office. Problem solved.

Americans who read the news even poorly know large corporations use tax inversions to avoid massive amounts of taxes due the U.S. government legally. What most Americans don’t know is they can use the same strategies on a smaller scale to never pay state income tax again. My guess is fewer than ten accounting firms in the U.S. utilize these strategies to protect their clients from state taxes. Today I will show you how to use the tax inversion without the help of an accountant.

A tax inversion happens when a major corporation buys a smaller company in a low or lower tax country or municipality. The acquiring company then moves its headquarters to the acquired company’s country. We will not get into the minutia of corporate tax law as it is not the focus of this post. We will use techniques of large corporations where they are applicable to small businesses, landlords, and retired taxpayers living or working entirely within the U.S.

When it comes to passive income, real estate is king. A small investment can be leveraged into a massive cash cow. This is the second in a series of posts on lessons learned. Some lessons in life come from clients or from watching clients deal with issues. With investment properties I pull from personal experience. Over the years I have owned over 100 single family homes, numerous duplexes, a few multi-unit buildings, a storage facility, commercial property, and farm land. The lessons I have learned buying, selling, and leasing real estate over the last 28 years should provide a few nuggets of wisdom you have not read before. This added wisdom hopefully flows to your bottom line.