Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Savvy Business Report 1
Savvy Business Report 1
Savvy Business Report 1
by Shawn M. Casey, Esquire When you do business in your own corporation, you open up a whole new world of opportunities for increasing your net profit through proper tax planning. The corporation will also protect you from personal liability for problems involving corporate assets or employees. The corporation has been called the Ultimate Tax Shelter and the Last Way Left for the Little Guy to Get Rich. When you realize that all the tax advantages available to the big guys, i.e., IBM, GE, etc., are now available to you for your small business, you have to be excited about the possibilities.
Why Incorporate?
The first reason to incorporate is to avoid personal liability. The corporation was originally conceived to provide business owners with protection from liability. The idea was to encourage people to create and grow businesses by eliminating some of the risk of personal loss. Risk is something we all face in our businesses. The proper analysis and reduction of risk allows us to prosper without fear of losing everything. If you structure your affairs properly, you can make it virtually impossible for any lawsuit to seriously hurt you. The owners of the corporation are the shareholders. It doesnt matter how many shares you own. Your percentage of the total shares issued by the corporation determines your percentage of ownership. Shareholders are not liable for corporate activities. If an employee causes an accident, the victim can obtain a judgment against the corporation, but not against the shareholder. If an employee becomes disgruntled, he can obtain a judgment against the corporation, but not against the shareholder. If someone is injured on corporate property, the result is the same. If the corporation is sued, the corporate assets are at risk, but the shareholders remain safe and secure. As long as the corporation is properly run, the shareholders are not at risk. The second reason to incorporate is the available tax advantages. As the Internal Revenue Service and Congress developed the tax code, two methods of taxing corporations were created. Depending on your choice of tax treatment as a C corporation or an S corporation, you can alter the level and effect of taxation. With proper tax planning, you can greatly reduce your income taxes and dramatically increase your net income. Youll find a further explanation of tax advantages below. The third reason to incorporate is to avoid being designated as a real estate dealer by the Internal Revenue Service. If you are a real estate investor who buys real estate with the intent to sell (property you
flip or quick turn), the Internal Revenue Service can choose to classify you as a dealer. The problems with being classified as a dealer are: 1. You cannot depreciate any real estate, including long term investment property. This greatly increases your taxable income. 2. Instead of reporting rental income on Schedule E of your personal tax return, you report your rental income on Schedule C. Then, you report the net income from Schedule C on Schedule SE. Schedule SE is the schedule used to figure your self employment income tax. You will pay up to 15.3% of your net income as additional taxes over and above your income taxes. 3. You cannot defer the tax due on the sale of a property by using tax deferred exchanges under Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 1031 allows the owner of investment real estate to sell his property, escrow the net proceeds, purchase additional investment property and avoid paying part or all of the income tax which would otherwise be due. For more information on tax deferred exchanges, please refer to the Special Report titled, How To Never Pay Taxes When You Sell Real Estate. 4. You cannot elect to use the installment method of reporting the sale of real estate. Usually, when you sell a property and receive payments in lieu of the complete purchase price, you can choose to report the money you receive as income only when you actually receive the money. Without the option to elect the installment method of reporting, you must report the total amount of the sale and pay the full amount of tax due, even if you have not yet received the money. If you sold a property for $50,000 with a $5,000 down payment, then you could actually owe more income taxes than the $5,000 you received from the purchaser. To avoid being classified as a dealer, savvy real estate entrepreneurs buy and sell real estate through their corporations. If the corporation is classified as a dealer, the individual is not affected. The individual can continue to report his rental income on Schedule E and receive the appropriate tax advantages. If the corporations tax status is hurt by being classified as a dealer, you have the option to dissolve the corporation and start a new one. The corporations tax status is usually not affected by the classification as a dealer because the penalties for being a dealer do not hurt the corporation when it simply buys and sells real estate.
1. Nevada does not levy any corporate or individual taxes. Most other states have corporate income taxes, franchise fees or both. 2. Nevada does not require the shareholders to be disclosed. If the shareholders names are not included in the filed information, then no person can discover them from the public information. 3. Nevada allows the articles of incorporation to eliminate any liability of the directors. In other states, the directors can be held liable to outside parties and to the shareholders. 4. Nevada is the only state which does not have an information sharing treaty with the Internal Revenue Service. Other states share your personal and corporate income information with the Internal Revenue Service. Many people choose to incorporate in Nevada to take advantage of these laws. You can form your Nevada corporation without ever going to Nevada. You can use one of several incorporation services which will file the necessary documents for you. These services will also act as the required registered agent within Nevada. After you have filed your incorporation papers, you will hold the initial meetings of the shareholders and the directors. You will need to determine who will serve as the officers and directors. The corporation is required to have three officers a president, a secretary and a treasurer. In most states, one person (you) can act as all three officers. You can also just have one director on the board of directors in most states. As the owners of the corporation, the shareholders elect the directors to the board of directors. The directors then elect the officers. The directors and officers serve a one year term or until their successors are elected. In addition to electing the officers and directors, you will authorize and approve the bylaws, articles of incorporation, stock certificates, and other such matters at the initial meetings. Once you have completed these meetings and filed the appropriate information in the corporate record book, you have finished the process of incorporation. Many people wonder if they can handle this task themselves or if they should hire an attorney. An attorney will charge from $500 to $750 plus the cost of the state filing fees. If you have the right information available, you can file the correct documents with the state and complete all the corporate documents yourself. You are required to hold annual meetings of the shareholders and directors. An attorney will charge from $200 to $400 to complete the minutes of these meetings. With the proper information, you can hold these meetings and complete the meetings yourself. Forming and running your own corporation is fairly simple. Certainly, you can handle all the required tasks yourself. Doing it yourself provides you not only with a significant cost savings, but assures you that everything is done just the way you want it.
The shareholders can unanimously elect to be treated differently, as a Subchapter S corporation. A C corporation has no limits on the type of shareholders, the number of shareholders or the classes or types of stock. An S corporation can only have 75 shareholders. An S corporation can only have one class of stock which must be common voting stock. A C corporation is a separate taxpayer. This means a C corporation pays tax on its net income. If you are the owner of the corporation and an employee, you can make certain that the corporation never pays taxes by spending all the money each year. If profits are still undistributed as you approach the end of your tax year, you can pay yourself those profits as a bonus. Because the C corporation is a separate taxpayer, you will have a variety of tax planning options available with the C corporation that are not available with an S corporation. You may have occasion to choose to leave profits in the C corporation. Like you, the C corporation has tax brackets so the tax rate increases as the income rises. Many people think corporate tax rates are very high, much higher than individual tax rates. While this is true at the high income levels, at lower income levels the corporate tax rates are quite reasonable. For example, the first $50,000 of corporate net income is taxed at only a fifteen (15%) percent rate. This rate is sometimes lower than your personal tax rate. An S corporation files a tax return, but does not pay taxes. The shareholders pay taxes on the net profits in accordance with their respective shares of ownership. If the corporation has a net profit which it retains and does not distribute, the shareholders pay taxes on the money anyway. In one specific situation, an S corporation is particularly useful when you are starting a business and expect to lose a substantial amount of money for a few years. The losses will be reported on the shareholders tax returns and can offset other income.
planning. Proper tax planning can provide significant tax savings annually. When the profit is still sitting in the corporation in December, you have two (2) choices. The first is to leave the money in the corporation and deal with it next year. The second is to pay the money out in expenses and bonuses to yourself, and pay taxes in the current year. You will make this choice based upon your specific situation. Your goal is to pay the least amount of income taxes and this setup will allow you to adjust to changing situations. If you leave the money in the corporation, you can then pay yourself a salary on January 1st. You have now shifted the income and the tax to the next year, but you have the money available to you personally now. You could also choose to leave the money in the corporation until the end of the corporations fiscal year. You would then determine how much money you should distribute to keep your income taxes as low as possible.
The corporation can provide additional insurance coverage for you. It can pay for life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance, catastrophic illness insurance and many other types of insurance.
Or, you can form your own corporation like tens of thousands of people have done. Creating your own corporation is not that difficult once you learn the simple rules. My home study course, How to Create and Use Corporations, will provide you with step-by-step instructions. Thousands have followed these steps and formed their own corporation. Now, you can do it, too! But, thats only the beginning. The most important part of using your new corporation is what you do with it after youve formed it. How to Create and Use Corporations will show you exactly: how to maximize your tax deductions (5 pages of single-spaced items so you dont miss any) the best ways to get the most benefits for you and your family how to save hundreds in attorneys fees by holding your own annual meetings the difference between subchapters C and S and which tax status is right for you the truth about Nevada corporations and when theyre right for you As an attorney, I represented many small business owners and dealt daily with their problems and concerns. Since 1992, I have been travelling the country teaching small business owners how to maximize their business benefits and minimize their risks. Ive been called, The attorney whos taught thousands of people how to save millions of dollars. I continue to share this valuable information with thousands of business owners each year. How to Create and Use Corporations contains mountains of valuable information. The course manual is over 200 pages long. The cassette tapes contain four hours of in-depth education about your corporation and getting the most bang for your buck. The course contains a complete set of forms for every move youll ever make as a corporation. You can copy these forms and easily fill them in by following the instructions. And all the forms are supplied on a CD so you can easily fill in the blanks and have them done ASAP. By now, youre probably expecting Ill charge more for this course than the most expensive attorney because it costs you nothing extra to listen to the tapes again and again. Thats not going to happen. I want to make this information affordable for everyone so they get incorporated right away. To purchase How to Create and Use Corporations, please click here.