Entrepid

Edit for clarification - By default, an LLC is treated for tax purposes as either a Sole Proprietorship (single owner LLC) or a Partnership (multiple owner LLC.)  You can, however, elect to be treated as a corporation and then elect that corporate status to be S Corp.  These are two separate elections and the IRS must approve your elections before they become effective.  There are rules and deadlines to satisfy, so consult your tax professional.

The vast majority of LLC’s I see have not done the elections for S Corp status, and are therefore paying more in payroll taxes than necessary.  Hence, the following article.

If your business is organized as an LLC, you have a choice of being taxed as a Corporation or as a Partnership.  Most LLC’s choose the latter through inaction.

If this is you, you’re wasting money on FICA taxes.  All of the Guaranteed Member Payments and the net income for those actively engaged in managing the business are subject to FICA (Social Security and Medicare taxes.)

The profits of an S Corporation are NOT subject to FICA.  Here’s how the two compare:

For simplicity, let’s assume you are the sole owner of your LLC and you actively manage the business.  The income to you (Guaranteed Payments and/or net income in any ratio) is $80,000.  The entire $80,000 will be subject to the FICA self employment tax of 15.3% for a total of $12,240.  Half of this will be deductible from your income tax - worth approximately $1,836 in the 30% tax bracket, for a net cost of $10,404.

An S Corp is Treated Differently

Salaries paid to an owner of an S Corporation are subject to FICA - the company pays half and the employee (owner) pays half.  The total is still 15.3%.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  The profits of the S Corp are NOT subject to FICA.  Let’s see how our example changes.

Let’s assume the same $80,000 in income, but this time half ($40,000) is paid as salary and half is allowed to flow through to the owner as profit.  Both halves of the FICA total $6,120 - half of the total for the LLC.  The half paid by the corporation ends up being a tax deductible expense, so at the same 30% income tax bracket, this is worth $918.  The resulting total is $5,202 - a savings of over $5,000.

Don’t Get Greedy

You are probably thinking that if splitting your income 50/50 between salary and profits is good, splitting 80/20 or 90/10 must be even better.

All things being equal that would be the case, but the IRS knows this too.  There are rules in place that require your salary to be "reasonable."  What’s reasonable is subject to interpretation, so you should consult your tax advisor.

You May Still Want an LLC

There could be some other reasons why you want an LLC, even though it costs extra FICA taxes.  You should consult your attorney or CPA.  However, for most business owners I believe an S Corporation is the way to go.

The folks over at FreelanceSwitch have a slick Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator. I say slick, because it’s a nice piece of software, but I think it gets the order of things backwards.

It’s actually pretty common for small businesses (and consultants and freelancers) to attempt a cost-plus approach to setting prices. It’s easy to add up all your costs, put in a profit percentage, and voila!, you have the price you want to charge. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t always co-operate.

The price you can charge your customers is limited on the upside by “value” and competition.

Value is a slippery concept, but even if your customer doesn’t have a firm number in mind, they do have some notion of what your product, service or time is worth. Whether or not this is enough to cover your costs is of no concern to them.

Think of it this way: if a prospective client approached me to do several months’ worth of backlogged bank reconciliations and I quoted them a rate of $175 an hour, I doubt very much they’d engage me. Bank reconciliations don’t have a “value” of $175 an hour.

Which brings up the second price limitation: competition. The prospective client could certainly find someone else to do bank reconciliations at a much lower hourly rate – maybe $20 or $25 an hour. Even if they’re not as efficient at bank recs as I am, their total cost will still be much lower.

So, your price is limited by both the value of the product or service AND by your competition – you get the lower of the two.

But, maybe your value is very high and you either don’t have much competition or they charge high prices. Why would you want to limit your income to some cost + profit level when you could possibly charge more?

I can see two bad results from using the cost-plus approach. Either you price yourself out of the market and don’t get enough business, or you underprice yourself and leave money on the table. Neither one is a good result.

That doesn’t mean I think the calculator is a bad thing. It’s a useful tool to see if the prices you plan on charging are enough to cover your expenses. If not, you need to rethink your business.

Hat Tip: Lifehack.org

Lagging Indicators are those pieces of data that tell us what happened. They’re history.

The most common collection of lagging indicators that business owners are familiar with are the financial statements – Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement – along with the other management and financial reports pouring forth from the accounting department.

If you’re like a lot of companies I come across that are transitioning from small business to small enterprise, you get your financial statements for the previous year in April July. So not only are your indicators history, they’re ancient history. That’s a tough way to manage a business. Read the rest of this entry »