> Because yes, it does sound pretty ridiculous that an LLC needs to maintain a $0 balance or else it will penalize the owners of said LLC. That doesn't sound right.
It's definitely not correct at all. Neither is issuing phantom invoices to yourself to put money into the account.
A bank account is just a vehicle to store business cash, it really has nothing directly to do with the way you should be maintaining your LLC's books. You should be recording things like that as "capital contributions" which increase your "capital account."
Similarly, profits and losses should be booked to your capital account. I would strongly recommend doing some reading on capital account bookkeeping.
Excellent -- thank you very much for the corrections. I was wondering precisely that, when I was initially funding my Mercury account.
I may have given the wrong impression, but to be clear I certainly wasn't recommending using Mercury as your tax accounting software! I was saying that as long as income flows into your LLC's bank account, and out into your personal account, and that you never use your business account for personal expenses, then you have nothing to worry about.
I really appreciate the reference on capital accounts; not knowing how to classify inbound transfers from my personal account was bothering me. That still raises the question of whether there is a tax, and how much the tax is. Are you saying there's no income tax when you transfer your personal funds into an LLC, since capital contributions aren't income?
> If you plan to contribute property, you will need to obtain a market valuation to determine the value of the property you are contributing to the LLC. Capital contributions in the form of property may also attract a number of potential tax consequences, so it's generally a good idea to consult with a tax advisor beforehand.
> You also can make a capital contribution in the form of services. As with property, you will need to obtain a market value for the value of your services. There also are tax consequences, as you will have to treat this value as if it were actual income you earned for your services, meaning you will have to pay personal income taxes on the value of these services. Because of this, services are not as popular a form of capital contribution.
So, yes, you can "invoice for services rendered" (aka services capital contribution, apparently) but it'll be taxed as income. Therefore, you want to contribute property, and the tax consequences are left as an exercise to the reader.
Looks like I'll be completing that exercise, but perhaps not at 2:30am.
> The capital contribution increases the owner or partner's equity interest in the entity. Capital contributions are not considered business income unless given in the form of a loan.
> For a Single Member LLC (that has not made an election to be taxed as a corporation), the IRS does not recognize the LLC exists (for most purposes). Therefore, you and the LLC are the same. Therefore, there really isn't such thing a Capital Contribution for tax purposes.
Apparently "It's complicated(TM)" is still the final answer, because single member LLCs can't have Capital Contributions. Hmm.
One reason I post openly about this sort of thing is precisely because people like yourself come out and correct my misunderstandings. So again, thank you! This is certainly a reminder that I have lots more reading to do.
> Just like now with police brutality in the US: so much violence from them that expressing/inciting hate toward them becomes acceptable in my book.
So it is you, personally, that is the arbiter of what is and isn't OK? Does your own repeated expression of intolerance for the fundamentals of free speech in this thread similarly allow me to mark "expressing/inciting hate" toward you as "acceptable" as well? Where does this kind of reasoning end?
> Only someone like Apple could have pulled it off and forced all of their customers to change the way they use their devices but now we are better off because if it.
They didn't force "all" of their customers to change. Some of us left their ecosystem entirely. My ThinkPad now suits me quite nicely using my devices the way I want to.
How is that relevant? No one is talking about the Constitution. Neither I nor the parent comments I responded to ever mentioned that Strugis rally should have been shutdown by the government. We can criticize something or point out that it shouldn't have happened without us needing to have the Supreme Court weigh in.
From a moral perspective, getting people killed in order to have some fun is less defensible than getting people killed in support of civil rights. I wouldn't think that is a controversial statement.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
These are enumerations, not distinctions. One person's right to protest is not of any more importance than another's right to associate freely at a motorcycle rally.
I never got any of that stuff to work reliably before I moved off the Mac completely. It would sometimes work and often not work. Often enough that I wrote both of those features off as simple keynote gimmicks.
> Is this really all that bad? In the era of everything living in the cloud, it generally takes me only a couple hours to setup a system again from scratch.
In the 90s I used to laugh at my Windows friends who had to "reformat the C drive and re-install Windows" every month or so when it became unusable. Their excuses sounded much like yours: a lot of hand waving about how it's "not so bad" and not a big deal.
It's definitely not correct at all. Neither is issuing phantom invoices to yourself to put money into the account.
A bank account is just a vehicle to store business cash, it really has nothing directly to do with the way you should be maintaining your LLC's books. You should be recording things like that as "capital contributions" which increase your "capital account."
Similarly, profits and losses should be booked to your capital account. I would strongly recommend doing some reading on capital account bookkeeping.