Advantages of an S corp over an LLC, Sole-Proprietorship, C Corporation, or Partnership

The "S corp" is simply an election with the IRS, and you can make the S corp election on an LLC.

The S corp. election is a common election for regular corporations and LLC’s. If you declare your company as an S corp., you will have to pay yourself a regular W2 wage. This means establishing payroll and withholding for yourself with the IRS and the State you’re a resident in.

The advantage to this is the capability to divide up your profits between payroll and dividends.
What this means is, you will pay yourself a “regular” wage for someone in your role. (The IRS says the wage must be reasonable) Obviously, if it's a new company, the wage doesn't have to be that high and if you have left over profit, you can pull that down to yourself as personal income as a dividend. Dividends avoid the self employment tax (15%) and/or payroll taxes, such as Social Security and Medicare withholding. This adds up to 15% because as the employer, you match the Medicare and Social Security withholding you take out of your employees' checks. In your personal case, you will be the employee anyway, so that is why you're paying it twice. The current Social Security tax rate is 6.2% and the current Medicare tax rate is 1.45%. So as an employee, you get 7.65% of your check withheld, and as the employer, you match that to the IRS Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), making your total 15.3%. That means whatever profit you can take as a dividend, you can avoid the 15.3%tax on that dividend dollar amount.

You see if you are a sole proprietor, you will pay the 15% self employment tax for Medicare and Social Security anyway, so there’s no special treatment on a sole proprietor, except that it’s less paperwork to keep track of your books.

If you pay yourself a wage, you will have to pay the Social Security and Medicare. So if you end up with $10,000 net taxable income at the end of the year, and you divvy it up by paying yourself $5,000 for the year, you’ll take a $5,000 dividend, and thus save the 15% of $5,000 dollars.

Or if you're a C corporation:

The corporate income tax rate is usually higher than the personal tax rate. If you have a regular C corporation, you’ll keep the profits of the company at the corporate level. You don’t have to pull it down to you personally. If you ever decide to take a dividend, you’ll be paying tax twice though.

If you declare your C Corporation an S corp., you’ll have to pull the net taxable income down to the shareholder’s personal tax returns, and pay the profits at whatever taxable income bracket you’re in. This usually will save you a lot of taxes unless you plan on keeping a lot of cash in the company, and ultimately re-investing it back in the company.

If you would like to make the S corp. election with the IRS, we would be glad to help you make this step.

Capital Gains rates about to Jump

I guess it is not a surprise that the top tax rate on dividends may surge...

The Senate Budget Committee recently passed a budget resolution that would nearly triple the top tax rate on dividends from 15% to 39.6%. President Barack Obama had proposed a 20% tax rate on dividends in his 2011 budget. Additionally, the health care legislation includes a 3.8% surcharge on dividends and other investment income.