Business and Personal Finance: Tax Planning Strategies

The Income Tax Impact – Tax Planning Strategies Tax planning strategies range from the very simple to the excruciatingly complex, but they all have one thing in common: they seek to minimize your overall tax bill. There are dozens of means available to help you accomplish this goal, from gray areas to loopholes to income … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Your Payment Strategy Impacts Your Personal Taxes

The Income Tax Impact – Your Payment Strategy Impacts Your Personal Taxes Like most of the other tax issues surrounding your business, the impact on your personal tax return depends on the entity you’ve chosen for your company. No matter which business structure you’ve used, though, if your company has earned profits (and even sometimes … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Different Ways to Pay Yourself

The Income Tax Impact – Different Ways to Pay Yourself One of the reasons you started a business was to make some money. Once your business is profitable, you have to decide whether, when, and how you want to transfer some of that money into your personal accounts. The different ways you can do that, … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Introducing Business Tax Forms

The Income Tax Impact – Introducing Business Tax Forms For every business entity, there’s a separate income tax form. Even those entities that don’t have to pay any income taxes on their own still have tax returns to fill out; these are referred to as informational returns. Plus, no matter what type of business structure … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Different Income Taxation for Different Entities

The Income Tax Impact – Different Income Taxation for Different Entities The way to determine your company’s income taxes depends wholly on its entity. Each entity comes with its own tax forms, not to mention unique tax benefits and drawbacks. Overall, though, there are really only two basic categories that your company’s income taxes could … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Financial Statements Flow into Tax Returns

The Income Tax Impact – Financial Statements Flow into Tax Returns The first time you look at any business tax return form, you’ll see that it resembles your financial statements, without the numbers filled in yet. That’s really all the tax return is, after all: a standard form on which to report your company’s revenues, … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: The Corporate Equity Section

Different Entities Mean Different Equity – The Corporate Equity Section Corporations have the most complex equity sections of any business entity, and for C corporations it can get much trickier than for S corporations. Owner’s equity for corporations has more components than other business forms. It starts with the two basic divisions that all companies … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Distributing Partnership Profits and Losses

Different Entities Mean Different Equity – Distributing Partnership Profits and Losses Since partnerships don’t pay their own income taxes, being pass-through entities (structures where only the owners pay taxes on the business income, which you’ll learn more about in Chapter 16), any profits or losses have to be divided among the partners. The partners then … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Accounting for Sole Proprietorships

Different Entities Mean Different Equity – Accounting for Sole Proprietorships A sole proprietorship has a single owner, making his equity the easiest of all to calculate. For this entity, the basic accounting equation says it all: the assets minus the liabilities equals the owner’s equity (a rearrangement of the classic assets equal liabilities plus equity … Read more

Business and Personal Finance: Meet the Business Entities

Different Entities Mean Different Equity – Meet the Business Entities From the accounting standpoint, you have only to deal with three entities, or forms of business: sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations. That’s because even though other forms exist, they share the same accounting structure as one of these three. FACT LLCs, the most common small-business … Read more