Table of Contents
Written by : Lura Ofallon |
Current : 2040 |
Write a comment |
Write a comment
welcome back to taxes made simple today we're going to go over llc's we're discussing today top 5 write-offs for llcs now there could be a number of reasons why you decided to start an llc maybe you're a new business owner maybe you just started earning 1099 income and someone told you you need some type of entity structure maybe you're a truck driver maybe you even want to invest in a rental property and you want to get an llc for asset protection well if that's you today today we're just going to go over the top five tax strategies for llcs to put you in a better position number one start up an organizational cost as a new business owner chances are you are going to have startup costs and organizational costs startup costs and organizational costs could be in the form of marketing advertising maybe you've already established your website or maybe you spent some money on getting some training and some coaching before you decided to establish your business anytime that you have cost before you're considered operational they're considered startup costs and operation costs and you as a business owner are able to take five thousand dollars in your first year as startup cost or organizational cost let's just say that you spend more than five thousand dollars on getting your business set up any expense that exceeds five thousand dollars is amortized over the course of 180 months so as a business owner you still get to benefit from some of those costs that you had that exceeded 5 000 be very mindful of this when you file your tax returns that you make sure that you include all of your startup costs and all of your organizational costs for your small base business number two the home office deduction in the year of 2020 we were faced with a pandemic if you're watching this video right now chances are you probably lived through it so let's talk a little bit more about the tax deductions you can take as a small based business owner one of the biggest tax write-offs is the home office deduction most small based business owners are working from their home so how do we go about taking this home office deduction well it's simple if you have a designated space in your home or a designated room in your home that you're doing business in that is strictly for business you can take that space and leverage that space as a home office deduction here's how it works you start off by getting the square footage of your home office space or your home office once you have that square footage you're going to divide your home office space or your home office buy the entire square footage of your entire home when you do this calculation you are going to receive a percentage this percentage will be your home office percentage based on the utilities that you have in your home utilities could include your water cable electricity and gas fill these all go into your home office expenses anytime that you are making repairs or maintenance or doing improvements to your home office these can also go down as a part of your home office expense this is another way for business owners to benefit from some of the changes that they plan on making in their home as a part of their home office number three the vehicle deduction as a business owner you could travel to meet with your clients and chances are your vehicle is going to be used for your business how do we go about making sure that that vehicle that's used for your business is leveraged the right way there are two different ways in which you can determine to take a vehicle deduction inside of your llc one way is by taking the mileage when you are a business owner you have the ability in the year of 2020 to take 58 cents per every single mile you drive for many uber lyft and truck drivers mileage is extremely important because they are tracking their mileage on various different apps called mile iq or even quickbooks has a way for you to track your mileage on your cell phone being able to track every business mile you take is important so that you're getting all of your deductions just think about it 58 cents for every single mile you drive that can add up extremely quickly the second way for a business owner to take a vehicle deduction is by depreciating their vehicle inside of their business a vehicle depreciates over the course of five years if you purchase a vehicle that's 50 000 this would result in a ten thousand dollar write-off each year if you were to take a straight line depreciation there are different methods in how you can depreciate a car you can choose to do a double declining method that allows for you to accelerate a portion of your depreciation so you are getting a bigger write-off with your vehicle as opposed to waiting the entire five years to take all of the 50 000 there's also the code section 179 that allows for you to take a business deduction for a vehicle that weighs over 6 000 pounds all in one year so if you happen to purchase a vehicle that weighs over 6 000 pounds you can ride off the entire vehicle in your business through your llc in the same year reducing your taxes immediately let's discuss marketing and advertising no business runs without getting customers through the door if you're in business whether you're selling services or you're providing products you're gonna need to market those services for those products and you're gonna need to advertise them marketing and advertising are two of the biggest expenses that most business owners have because it's how you're able to create consistent income within your organization when you are having marketing and advertising going out whether it's flyers website seo this is a business expense that you get to take every single year through your llc when you are spending money on marketing and advertising these are immediate expenses these expenses do not have to be amortized over time or depreciated over time so rather than having to take marketing and advertising as an expense like a vehicle over five years you are able to write off your marketing and your advertising in the exact same year that you spend the money on your marketing and advertising as long as they're not considered startup organizational costs you will have no problem expensing a hundred percent of your marketing and your advertising through your llc and number five turning your llc into an s corporation when your business grows to the point when the benefits outweigh the cost to switch your llc to an escort you will eliminate a 15.3 of self-employment tax that many llcs and sole proprietors pay into not to mention you will be able to take a deduction when you decide to place yourself on payroll because an s corporation requires that the business owner pays themselves out of their business it's one of the many benefits to being a business owner being able to control the income you pay yourself and control the amount of income your tax gap one of the many benefits to being in an llc is that you can choose to tax yourself as an llc you can choose to tax yourself as an s corporation or you can choose to tax yourself as a c corporation however one of the benefits to taxing yoursel
Thanks for your comment Maynard Holtsclaw, have a nice day.
- Lura Ofallon, Staff Member
hey guys welcome back to the channel crystal here cpa and co-founder of life accounting today i'll be going over the top five write-offs you could be taking in your llc this year and next year and the year after that all to save you the most on your taxes are you ready let's get started there are over 20 million llcs in the u.s today and chances are if you're watching this video you already have an llc or at least thinking about starting one of your own in either case you want to make sure you're aware of the tax write-offs or deductions you could take to minimize your tax liability or even maximize your refund the first write-off i'm going to discuss is the home office deduction this has to be one of my favorite write-offs because it can apply to almost everyone and it allows you to write off normally personal expenses as business expenses if you have a dedicated room or space in your home that is strictly for business you can take the home office deduction most small business owners run their business from their home anyways and considering the worldwide pandemic we experience and are currently experiencing a lot of us entrepreneurs were forced to work from home so here's how it works first you would need to figure out the square footage of your home office or space then you would divide that by the total square footage of your entire home this would give you the business percentage use of your home you can then write off that business percentage of your rent mortgage interest utilities insurance real estate taxes repairs maintenance the list goes on and on so for example let's say your home office or space is 150 square feet and your entire home is 1500 square feet 150 divided by 1500 is 10 so now you can deduct 10 of your rent your utilities and all of the other expenses that i mentioned side note notice how i've been mentioning it as a home office or space you don't necessarily need an entire room in your house to take this deduction it just has to be a dedicated workspace so if that's a desk and a chair in the corner of your living room that can work if that area is regularly used and worked in for business the second write-off i'm going to discuss is startup and organizational costs when you first start your llc there's a pretty good chance you had some initial investment cost and things like computers equipment research and development maybe you paid a consultant or a lawyer you probably had some state filing fees you had to pay right you're able to deduct up to five thousand dollars in startup costs in the first year you open your business now let's assume that you spent more than five thousand dollars because that can easily happen you can write off the first five thousand in year one and amortize the cost above five thousand over 180 months so those costs are not completely wasted and will benefit you on your taxes over the years to come the third write-off is your cell phone expenses so if you're anything like me i do a lot of my business on my cell phone probably more business than personal this creates the opportunity to not only write off the purchase of your cell phone which we know can easily be over a thousand dollars but also the monthly service of that cell phone but similar to the home office deduction you can only write off the business use of your cell phone so if eighty percent of the usage of your cell phone is for business purposes you can only write off eighty percent of the cell phone and monthly service on your tax return the fourth write-off is vehicle expenses this is a big one that a lot of business owners miss or just don't take advantage of i'm always reminding my clients about this deduction and they're like oh yeah i did use my car for business last year when you use your vehicle for business purposes there are two ways you can write off the expenses you can write off the mileage or you can write off the actual expenses of the vehicle let me explain with the mileage approach you can write off 56 cents per mile in 2021 for every business mile you drive this rate changes every single year so it's important to keep up with what the business mileage rate is year over year though it doesn't fluctuate too much higher or lower than the current rate with the actual vehicle expense write-off you can deduct expenses like gas tires insurance repairs and lease payments if you use your vehicle for both personal and business these expenses must be split based on the number of miles for business and the total amount of miles driven from what i've seen in some cases it's better to take the actual expenses and in other cases the standard mileage rate is more beneficial the bottom line is you should be keeping track of your business miles and your overall mileage for the year and your vehicle expenses this is a huge deduction and can literally save you thousands of dollars business owners missed this one time and time again so i'm hoping you won't be one of them the fifth and final write-off is retirement okay so i hope that each and every one of you are saving for retirement as a business owner you're kind of out on your own when it comes to retirement but that's not necessarily a bad thing you just have to know what your options are there's sep iras solo 401ks and simple iras that can be used as tax deductions and retirement planning tools so let's say you go with the sep ira you can deduct up to 25 percent of your self-employment earnings that is put away for retirement solo 401ks is similar but you can't have any employees in your business to establish this retirement account solo 401ks also allow you to contribute more in a given year which would increase your write-offs we have some really good videos on our channel that take a deeper dive into retirement accounts for business owners so be sure to check those out as well you know what i'm going to give you guys a bonus tip that will save you thousands of dollars in taxes but you have to do me a favor and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already give this video a thumbs up and hey while you're at it comment down below what your favorite write-off is from today's video okay did you do that great so the bonus tip is getting s-corp status once your llc is growing making money it's your sole source of income it can be greatly beneficial to be taxed as an s corporation this will save you 15.3 percent in self-employment taxes as an llc taxed as an s corporation you do have to pay yourself the business owner a reasonable compensation and self-employment tax is calculated and paid based off of that amount but any profit above your compensation is not subject to self-employment tax plus you can write off your compensation from your business income this creates huge tax savings and not enough llc owners are doing this you know one of the benefits of having an llc is deciding how you want to be taxed you can be taxed as a sole proprietor which is usually the default and results in a lot of self-employment taxes you can also be taxed as a s corporation or even a c corporation as well electing to be taxed as an s corporation is not exactly a tax write-off but it is
Thanks Benny your participation is very much appreciated
- Lura Ofallon
About the author
I've studied programming languages at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View and I am an expert in electronic engineering. I usually feel pessimistic. My previous job was home entertainment system installer I held this position for 2 years, I love talking about car riding and quacking. Huge fan of Mike Patton I practice kayaking and collect hockey cards.
Try Not to laugh !
Joke resides here...