Ask HN: Payroll Tax Hacks

Note: If it's a C corp you don't have to take salary (iirc only S corps have to declare at least one person taking salary) and you can keep money in the firm (LLCs and LPs aren't structured to do this well), so you don't need to take any money out that you don't need personally.

As a general rule, the less money you need to pay yourself, the better.

1) If you turned profit in the same year you made the investment, you can return almost the entire original investment to yourselves with no tax penalty, derisking your individual stakes

2) You can pay dividends which are taxed at a lower rate (you dont have to pay FICA)

3) You can institute a buyback (so that the company buys back outstanding shares at a higher valuation). This is a little sticky because you can't arbitrarily inflate the valuation (the technical term is "arms-length", meaning that it should be a fair value that disinterested parties could find acceptable). The transaction would be seen as capital gains, and you have the flexibility of controlling timing and amounts.

4) Almost everything you can think of is a business expense:

- Food (of course)

- Cars (oh god there are a ton of deductions related to business vehicles and vehicles used whilst commuting)

- Parties (You have to hold shareholder meetings at one point in time ...)

Though I imagine this is better discussed over email.

one large payment is not cheaper than periodic payments. You can use company money for non business expenses but the IRS may catch up to you at some point. The penalties are not that stiff, but I wouldnt do it. It would be better to put your effort into building your business.

Here is one (IANAL and you need one to do this - if you need one I can recommend one)

Form an LP, make your C corp a general partner in the LP, you will be officers in the C corp. You will be limited partners in the LP. This gives you liability protection. The LP becomes your operating entity. Money flows into the LP from clients. It turns out that LP's can distribute money to limited partners without paying social security tax. There is no minimum salary required to do this. Your actual employees can be employees of the C corp as usual.

You will save around 15K/year per person who does this.

If you want to get money out completely tax free, look up a SEP IRA. The SEP ira lets you contribute 25% of your income up to 49K tax free. But it must be available for all employees. The company can contribute up to 50%.

Meals are only 50% deductible and it probably isnt worth doing, but if you guys go to dinner and talk business then your should. But if you put your cars into an LLC you can have your C corp pay the LLC and then deduct all car related expenses (insurance, gas, maintenance, interest). You can do the same with medical related expenses. IANAL - get a lawyer who understands how to do this.

for a C corp the income taxes are deductible up to a reasonable amount (so its not quite two full income taxes). At a small level, it may more sense to make salary payments rather than dividends (depends on the scale)

last i recall, pub 535 discussed this

What if it's for a single person LLC? I'm interested in payroll hacks for that too.