CPA for LLC Four tax lives, one wrapper.
The four lives. April is when the personal return hurts, and the entity return has its own morning on the calendar. Every owner knows that spring window. We feel that pile too, and the return is still due when the week clears.
The four lives
A company with one owner and no election usually passes its activity onto that owner's return. Two or more owners, and no election letter, usually means a partnership return. An S election puts the company on its own return and sends each owner a page of the result. A C corporation pays at the company and is a different animal. The certificate you framed does not say which of the four you are on.
People use one word for all four. That word is why the month goes to the wrong form. We start by naming the life you are actually on, from the letter in the file or from the fact that the letter is missing.
A rental held inside a company is often still reported with the rentals, not as an operating business. The wrapper did not change the form. If someone has been filing the rents as a trade, the fix is to put them back where the rents belong, for the open years, with the records that show it.
The federal calendar still looks at the company
A calendar-year partnership and a calendar-year S company generally file on day fifteen of month three. A calendar-year C corporation, and a disregarded company whose activity rides on Form 1040, generally file on day fifteen of month four. If the due morning lands on a weekend or a legal holiday, filing waits until the next morning the Service unlocks. Form 7004 is the request for more time on the entity return itself. Tax already owed keeps the first morning.
The return can be figured more than one way only in the sense that the letter chooses the form. We do not publish a tax you will owe. The public dates are the shape of the year, not a bill for your address.
A company whose profit already landed on the owner's return can still have its own due date when a letter put it on an entity form. That surprise is common. The folder for that date exists so the surprise has a morning.
Wages, basis, and the missing page
On an S company the wage the owner takes and the profit left in the company are different numbers. A deduction that looks at wages notices a year that paid none. Paying a wage through a real payroll file, set up with a provider, is the ordinary way to have wages the deduction can see. A journal entry is not a wage.
An S company can exist in the owner's mind while the owner's personal return has no page for it. The company return and the personal return have to find each other. If the page is missing, we look for the company return before we invent numbers on the personal one.
Basis is the owner's running stake. Contributions add to it. Distributions are tested against it. Losses have to fit inside it. When contributions and distributions were netted in one account, basis is the first casualty, and the return cannot be repaired by staring at the net number.
A rental, a wage, and a page that went missing
Some companies on this search are really a rental with a wrapper around it. The rents still belong with the rents. Filing them as an operating trade because the bank account says limited liability company is how a year gets painted into the wrong shape. We put the rents back, for the open years, with the leases and the deposits that show what they were.
The wage question is the mirror image. An S company that paid the owner nothing has a deduction that looks at wages and finds an empty year. The repair is a payroll file set up early enough for a provider to run real pay, not a December journal entry with the word wages on it. The wage we call reasonable is written with you, from the work the owner really does.
The missing page is the one on the owner's own return. The company can have filed, or think it filed, while the personal return has no line for that result. We look for the company return before anyone types a number onto the personal one. Basis follows the same discipline. Contributions add. Distributions get tested. A net number that mixed the two cannot be stared into a repair.
The personal April pile and the entity due date share a season, which is why the entity return gets lost. We put that return in the same folder as the owner's form, with the public dates written beside the instructions, and with your own tax left off this website. The week can clear. A crowded week can end and the due date still sits on the morning the instructions already named.