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hello everyone i'm attorney aiden kramer with the law office of aiden h kramer in colorado and you're watching all up in your business since i get a lot of questions and a lot of the same questions i figured i would take a few videos to answer those questions most of the questions that i get have to do with single member llc's i'm guessing because there are a lot of single member llc's and it can be kind of confusing running them because you feel like you can kind of do whatever you want since you're the only owner but there are still rules and laws that you have to follow so all these questions that i'm going to be answering in this video and then a few of the next ones have to do with single member llc so the one question that i absolutely get more often than any other questions is how do you pay yourself in a single member llc if you're the only owner how and when and under what method are you supposed to pay yourself so that's what i'm going to answer today so as you can probably tell i take a lot of pride in the high quality of these all of in your business videos so in that spirit i've decided to hire a really expensive fancy graphics design company to come in and design some pictures for me to help explain how you pay yourself in a single member llc so i hope these graphics help me explain that and i hope you guys appreciate it because man were they expensive the way to pay yourself in a single member llc is going to differ depending on whether or not you've elected to be taxed as an s corp if you're not sure what an s corp is go ahead and look back to my video what the heck is an s corp and hopefully it'll answer that question for you all right are you ready for these fantastic graphics let's get going with it okay so as you can see here we have two business owners you can tell they're business owners because they're carrying briefcases and they're thinking about money they're both the sole owners in a single member llc as you can see in this fantastic graphic this business owner has elected to not be treated as an s corp for tax purposes this one on the other hand has elected to be taxed as an s corp so as the graphic shows when you're not treated as an s corp any money that goes into the llc is treated basically as personal income to the business owner and all of that income is subject to tax at the personal level of the business owner and is also subject to self-employment tax so because of that a business owner that's not treated as an s corp can be subject to a pretty high tax rate this business owner on the other hand since the llc is being taxed as an s corp is a little bit different the money goes into the llc and then the business owner has to take what's called a reasonable salary the irs doesn't really give a whole lot of guidelines about what a reasonable salary is but it's a good thing to talk over with your accountant or with your tax attorney business attorney to figure that out the llc owner gets paid a reasonable salary that salary is subject to taxes and subject to those self-employment taxes the rest of the money that the business owner takes above that reasonable salary is as a dividend and is not subject to those self-employment taxes so if your business is making a certain amount of money depending on what it is and what industry you're in and how much that reasonable salary would be the s-corp election could potentially save you a lot of money in taxes that's the basis between an s-corp and an llc as far as tax goes so what does that have to do with paying yourself well i'll tell you what it has to do since the business which is not being taxed as an s-corp all of that money is coming in as personal income for the business owner the business owner can basically pay himself however whenever and however much he wants to while that's true the business owner has to keep a few things in mind you have to make sure that after you've paid yourself whatever you're going to pay yourself the llc is still adequately capitalized so this means there has to still be enough money in the business in the name of the business to pay for overhead to pay for debt to pay for expenses that you expect to have and to potentially grow your business in the future so just because your business is bringing in ten thousand dollars a month doesn't mean you should be taking all that as your personal spending money and paying yourself ten thousand dollars a month you need to keep some of that in the business for those expenses and to grow your business and you also have to make sure you save money to pay for those taxes because with the self-employment tax you're gonna be subject to a pretty high tax rate and so you could potentially have to pay a lot of taxes so after you pay yourself you need to make sure you put away some of that to pay for those taxes so when you are in an llc and you're not being treated as an s corp the way you pay yourself is you cut yourself a check out of the business account and in your books you would call that a member distribution or a member withdrawal it's not really payroll and it's not a salary it's not deductible like payroll is so it's really you want to just call it a member distribution or a member withdrawal something similar to that in your book so i will pull back the curtain a little bit i like to be really transparent with you guys and i try to explain things as clearly as i can so in the spirit of that i'm going to describe to you how i pay myself i am a single member llc and i'm not treated as an s corp the reason for that if you're wondering is because i've only been in business for a year and i didn't think that i would be making enough in this year to really justify being treated as an escort so what i do is i pay myself usually two to three times a month and how i figure out how much to pay myself is i basically take however much income my business has had in that month or in whatever period since i last paid myself and just to be safe i take about half of that and then i take that as my own payment i do that assuming i know what my overhead's going to be and i know whatever expenses i'm going to have coming up so i make sure that all of those are going to be covered and then i take about 50 and then from that i take a little portion out and put that away to pay for my taxes and then whatever is left after that is mine to spend on um the really important things like food shelter clothing makeup shoes trips wine all the really good things that you're supposed to spend your money on so then opposite to that if you have elected to be treated as an s corp like i mentioned you have to pay yourself a reasonable salary which is going to depend on your industry and how long you've been in business and all of that which your accountant will hopefully help you figure out so you have to take that reasonable salary and that can be processed as payroll and then the taxes are going to come out of that reasonable salary and then anything else that you get paid you would call that a dividend and that wouldn't be subject to that self-employment tax so when you pay yourself as an s-corp you're going to h
Thanks for your comment Georgene Bellhouse, have a nice day.
- Shane Kevan, Staff Member
how do I pay myself in a s Corp versus a LLC Amanda here welcome to the business finance coach on YouTube today I'm going to answer this question that I know so many people are struggling with about the S Corp so how you pay yourself in an S corp you must pay yourself as an employee if you're an owner and an S Corp and you also work in the business you must pay yourself as an employee just like you would if you went out and you hired employees now this is a bit of a burden as far as it's more you have to do then if you're a single member LLC taxes self-employed there's nothing you need to do to pay yourself you just take your money once you do the S Corp I'll get to the tax savings in a second but once you do the S Corp you've got to pay yourself as an employee check out my video the four numbers you have to get you have to get those numbers to be able to follow all the rules to pay yourself as an employee now there are benefits to this you have workers comp and unemployment also you're set up to pay people as employees you know a lot of times people can delay in hiring people because they feel like it's going to be difficult in this case you're ready to go you're ready to hire more people so when you get your paycheck every period you will withhold federal income taxes state income taxes if you have them Social Security and Medicare taxes seven point six five percent and then the business the S corp also must put in seven point six five percent of Medicare and Social Security so you remit you hold all those taxes when you pay yourself and you pay them to the government's so come this time of year come tax time you need to file a w-2 for yourself now that W 2 is also filed with the IRS be sure to check out the other videos in my how to how to pay an employee series as those will apply to you now come the end of the year you will also file your escort business return before your personal return it's due by March 31st when you file that return you then issue yourself what's called a schedule k-1 that schedule k-1 passes through all the income of your escort onto your personal return if you have five partners in the S corp each one will get a schedule k-1 for their share so when you do your taxes you'll enter your w-2 and then you'll enter your schedule k-1 you have to do the business return before you can do your personal taxes because you need that schedule k-1 so how you save taxes is once you're earning more than whatever the average someone would be earning in your position in your type of business in your area and you have to have a third party report done to show that amount or at least that's best practice then you can pay yourself the extra in dividends and dividends are taxed at lower rates you can check out some of my videos on that topic but they're taxed at substantially lower rates so once your income is in higher brackets this can be really beneficial to you and even if you're in lower income bracket there's lower rates for dividends so it's always advantageous to have dividends and salary the dividends is how you save the taxes without that you don't really save taxes be sure to check out my comparison video for a single-member how lc2 S corp okay so I can't stress this enough you've got to get help with your escort I have so many people asking me about this and I see so many people doing it themselves I actually created a course so if you're interested in getting help in like a four week live course head over to my website Amanda Russell MBA and check it out I also I'm thinking about including that report you need I'm done by a third party so that could be a really fun course and get everyone going in the S Corp so let me know if you're interested in that and otherwise be sure to subscribe for more check out my videos in the s Corp and hiring yourself series and they will see you next time by
Thanks Latrice your participation is very much appreciated
- Shane Kevan
About the author
I've studied business english at North Central University in Minneapolis and I am an expert in cognitive anthropology. I usually feel hot. My previous job was mechanical drafter I held this position for 18 years, I love talking about sailing and hunting. Huge fan of Future I practice equestrian: dressage and collect jersey cards.
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