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How Choosing The Right Entity Can Save You Case Study

Satisfactory Essays

How choosing the right entity can save you
Written by Janet Gershen-Siegel

Business entities can seem confusing. Choose the right one from the very beginning and save on taxes and company liability.

First, here are the more common business entities.
Types of business entities
Sole Proprietorship

The SBA says a sole proprietorship is an unincorporated business owned and run by just one person. There is no difference between the owner and the business. That means you, the owner, get all of profits, but you are also responsible for all your business’s losses, debts, and liabilities.
Partnership

The SBA defines a partnership as a single business with two or more owners. Partnerships then divide into three types.
General Partnership …show more content…

An eligible domestic corporations can avoid double taxes (once to the corporation and again to the shareholders) if they opt to be treated as S corporations.

In an S Corporation, profits and losses can pass through to your personal tax return. The business itself is not taxed. Only shareholders are taxed. However, any shareholder employees must pay themselves reasonable compensation. The shareholder has to get fair market value, or the IRS could reclassify additional corporate earnings as wages.
Limited Liability Company

A limited liability company is as a type of hybrid legal structure. It has the limited liability features of a corporation with tax efficiencies and operational flexibility enjoyed by partnerships. The owners of an LLC are called members. Depending on the state, members can be one person (one owner), two or more people, corporations, or even other LLCs.

Unlike corporate shareholders, LLCs are not taxed as a separate business entity. Instead, all profits and losses pass through the business to each member of the LLC. Then LLC members report all the profits and losses on their personal federal tax returns, just like the owners of a partnership would.

There are two great reasons why it matters which business entity you choose.
Taxes

Here are the specifics:

• Sole proprietorship – since the single owner and the sole proprietorship are the same; the owner pays taxes on the sole proprietorship’s

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