Tax Services for Small Business Owners

Entity selection in plain terms

A single-member LLC changes nothing on the tax return by itself; it's liability protection with Schedule C taxation. The S-corp election is the tax event: it splits income into salary and distributions and can save meaningful payroll tax once profits are consistently strong. C-corps make sense in narrower cases (retained earnings, outside investors, certain fringe benefits). The wrong structure quietly costs money every year, which is why we revisit it as the business grows instead of setting it once and forgetting it.

The owner's payroll is not optional

An S-corp owner who works in the business must take a reasonable W-2 salary before distributions. Skipping payroll is the single most common S-corp audit trigger. We set the salary with documentation behind it and run the payroll so the distributions stay clean.

Biggest planning levers

These are the decisions that most meaningfully change a small business owner's tax bill:

• Entity type (LLC, S-corp, C-corp, partnership) and tax election timing
• Reasonable salary analysis for S-corp owner-employees
• Retirement plan design: Solo 401(k), SEP, SIMPLE, Defined Benefit
• Section 179 and bonus depreciation on equipment
• Qualified Business Income (Section 199A) deduction planning
• Health insurance deduction for self-employed
• Home office deduction

What clean books buy you

Accurate monthly books are what make every other lever usable. You can't time equipment purchases, set estimates, or model an S-corp election on numbers that are nine months stale. For an active business, monthly bookkeeping pays for itself in planning alone.