Accounting and Consulting
You can offset a large chunk of your small-business income if you contribute it to a tax-deferred retirement account…some options for you:
a. IRA: up to $6,500
b. SEP IRA: up to 25% of your business profit
c. Simple IRA: up to $15,500 plus 3% of your business profit
d. Solo-401K: up to $24,500 plus 25% of your business profit
e. Cash Balance Pension Plan: up to approximately $300,000
Imagine that you made $300K/year as a wage-earner – you can defer a maximum of $24,500 into your 401K or 403b plan at work and then will have to pay tax on the rest of your earnings. Instead, consider buying a franchise for $100K and expensing nearly all of the $100K purchase price in the year of purchase. Doing so is like deferring $100K into a 401K…you earned $100K and invested it in a small business and so get a $100K deduction/deferral. Then as the franchise produces profit, you take that profit and another year’s earnings from work and use those funds to purchase franchise #2 in order to defer tax on even more earnings. Repeat year after year.
Almost all small businesses and rentals get a new deduction equal to 20% of their profit if the taxpayer’s married-filing-joint taxable income is less than $315,000. If the taxpayer’s taxable income is above that amount, then the deduction could be limited based on the nature of the small business and whether or not the small business pays wages to its employees. We can calculate this deduction for you and share ideas with you that may allow you to still enjoy some of the deduction if your income is over $315,000.
In the old days, when you bought a $700 computer, you potentially were forced to depreciate that computer over 5 years. These days, you can immediately expense all business asset purchases utilizing one of 3 tax methods or elections: Section 179, 100% bonus depreciation, and the $2,500 de minimis expensing safe harbor election. These methods or elections apply to new or used assets purchased for your business. Example: If you buy a new track loader and finance it over 5 years with the bank, then you can write off the entire cost of the track loader in year 1 even though you only had the cash outlay of the down payment in year 1.
Your general goal is to smooth business-profit between years. Instead of recognizing profits of $100K, $200K, and $100K over a 3-year period, you generally will pay less tax if you recognize profit of $133K, $133K, and $133K over that same 3-year period. Time the recognition of income and expenses at year-end and the timing of large asset purchases to achieve this.
Assume you bought shares of stock 20 years ago that have appreciated. If you sell the shares, you might pay up to 23.8% Federal tax on their gain if you are in a high tax bracket. Consider gifting those appreciated shares to your child who is in a lower tax bracket so that child can sell them and pay tax at a 0% capital gains rate? This works as long as the child is not your dependent (i.e., that child is over age 18 or age 23 (if still in college)). This strategy also works when a retired parent or charity is the recipient of the gifted shares.
Buy your first property for $50K. When it is worth $80K, trade up to a better property. When that property is $110K, trade up for another property. By the time you die, you will have real estate worth $2M for which you only paid $50K. If you utilize the like-kind exchange rules when transferring between each property, then you can pass away holding the last property and the nearly $2M of gain could potentially vanish upon your death. If you would rather enjoy that appreciation for your own personal use while you are still alive, then you can borrow against the $2M property in retirement and enjoy the use of the borrowed funds without selling the property and being forced to recognize a gain…and, to top it off, the gain could potentially still disappear upon your death.
If all of your cash is trapped in an IRA, then you might be forced to have your IRA buy your next business. This is powerful if done correctly, but is disastrous if you aren’t super-careful (one mis-step and the entire value of the IRA is now taxable to you). Alternatively, if you think your life will be simpler by holding the business in your name, then you can withdrawal the funds needed to purchase the business from your IRA and offset that income by the losses generated by the immediate depreciation of the of the purchase of the business assets.