Tax Tips for the One Man (Woman) Business

Running a one-person business? Tired of the huge hit you take at tax time? Want to save money on your accounting and taxes? Consider these simple tips and tricks...

Tip 1: Use an accounting system

Oh sure. This sounds obvious. But unless you have a decent way to track both your income and your deductions, you not only won't know how much money you're making until tax time, you'll also miss or forget about tax deductions.

Something like Quicken or Microsoft Money will work just fine. If you need more bookkeeping horsepower than these checkbook programs provide, look at stepping up to QuickBooks or Microsoft Small Business Accounting.

Tip 2: Don't Incorporate

New business owners often rush to incorporate. But incorporation rarely makes sense for small businesses. And incorporation totally complicates your taxes and accounting.

What's a new business owner to do? Form a limited liability company instead. A limited liability company, or LLC, gives you all the same liability protection. But without the tax complexity of a corporation.

An LLC with just one owner, for example, gets treated for income tax purposes as a sole proprietorship. Which means to report your business activity to the IRS or state revenue folks, all you do is file a simple, one- or two-page schedule with your regular individual tax return.

Tip: Consider hiring your kids

If you have minor children and they help you out in your business-doing real work-consider hiring them. As long as they earn less than $5,000, they won't pay any income taxes on their wages nor any payroll taxes. Yet, you'll still get to write-off the amounts you pay them as business expenses. (This might be a neat way to save for a kid's college expenses.)

Tip 4: Consider hiring your spouse

While medical insurance is a deduction for income-tax purposes for sole proprietors, you can save far more in taxes by hiring your spouse and then setting up what's called a Section 105(b) plan. Such a plan lets you treat all of your family's medical expenses (insurance, out of pocket, deductibles and so on) deductions for both income tax purposes and self-employment tax purposes.

If you are interested in this, confer with a local tax practitioner. Section 105(b) plans can be a little tricky to understand if you haven't used them before.

Tip 5: Take the home office deduction

Hey, if you regularly and exclusively use some portion of your home for your business, go ahead and take the home office deduction.

Don't worry about this deduction being an audit flag. Or a hassle. The deduction is meant for people like you.

Tip 6: Set up a pension plan

If you want to save more than a regular IRA allows, set up a pension plan for your business. You can easily set up something like a SEP-IRA which will allow you to contribute up to twenty of your profit to a tax deferred account.

Example: If you make $50,000, you could use a SEP-IRA to contribute $10,000 to your pension account. And there are other good low-cost options available, too, such as SIMPLE-IRAs and one-person 401(k) plans.

To get more information on small business pension plans, contact the Vanguard Group at www.vanguard.com or Charles Schwab at www.schwab.com.

Tip 7: Learn and then use TurboTax or TaxCut

A final tip: In most cases, the taxes of sole proprietorship are pretty simple. So, rather than come to someone like me (a CPA) or an enrolled agent or one of those nationwide tax preparation firms, try doing your return yourself using tax software.

Programs like TurboTax and TaxCut work great for simple-situation sole proprietors.

Seattle CPA and financial planner Stephen L. Nelson, CPA says sole proprietors can save money on taxes and accountants by employing these seven, simple tricks.

Seattle CPA and financial planner Stephen L. Nelson CPA is the author of bestselling books about both Quicken and QuickBooks. He also publishes and edits the popular forming an s corp online web site.

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