Business
LLC
A legal structure that separates a business’s liabilities from its owners, formed with a state.
Also called Limited liability company.
An LLC is a state-law wrapper, not a tax status. Forming one changes who is liable for the business’s debts. By itself it changes nothing about how the business is taxed.
A single-member LLC is taxed as a sole proprietorship by default, on Schedule C. A multi-member LLC is taxed as a partnership by default, on Form 1065 with a K-1 to each member. Either can elect to be taxed as an S-corporation instead.
This is the most consequential confusion in small-business tax, and it runs both ways: people form an LLC expecting a tax change that does not come, and people assume an LLC must file its own return when most do not.
In Contha
Contha records the wrapper and the tax treatment as two separate things and runs every calculation on the treatment, so an S-corp’s revenue never lands on a Schedule C.
Related
Terms that come up beside this one
Sole proprietorship
A business owned by one person that is not legally separate from that person.
S-corporation
A tax election under which a business pays its owner a salary and passes the remaining profit through to them without self-employment tax.
Partnership
A business with more than one owner that files its own information return and passes profit through to the partners.
Disregarded entity
A business that exists legally but is ignored for federal tax purposes, its activity reported on the owner’s own return.