Llc for 1099?

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justordinary

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Hi, looking to switch jobs from W2 to 1099 to eventually opening up PP... Do you need to have LLC (or pllc or pc) for a 1099 job or is it not necessary? Thanks in advance for your input...

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Hi, looking to switch jobs from W2 to 1099 to eventually opening up PP... Do you need to have LLC (or pllc or pc) for a 1099 job or is it not necessary? Thanks in advance for your input...

Presently having some kind of business structure is beneficial for tax purposes if you are being paid on a 1099 basis but lots of contractors have no such thing.
 
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My plan was: start this 1099 job in ~ 3 months and in the meantime start preparing PP. I spoke to an accountant and he told me it takes up to 12 weeks to form LLC... I can't push off 1099 job to have my LLC formed. I also was told that the entire process of PP launching can take up to 9 months due to finding office address, forming llc, getting malpractice insurance, and getting on insurance panel... i obviously cannot have 0 income for 9 months straight, so i was planning on signing with 1099 job to have a small stream of income.... if i dont have any llc/pc/sp, does that mean the 1099 income just goes straight to my personal account and if anything bad happens they can come after my house?
 
My plan was: start this 1099 job in ~ 3 months and in the meantime start preparing PP. I spoke to an accountant and he told me it takes up to 12 weeks to form LLC... I can't push off 1099 job to have my LLC formed. I also was told that the entire process of PP launching can take up to 9 months due to finding office address, forming llc, getting malpractice insurance, and getting on insurance panel... i obviously cannot have 0 income for 9 months straight, so i was planning on signing with 1099 job to have a small stream of income.... if i dont have any llc/pc/sp, does that mean the 1099 income just goes straight to my personal account and if anything bad happens they can come after my house?

Little more nuanced than that last part. Personally, I would look into LLC/S-corp eventually, as there are some very good tax benefits there. First step I would take in your situation would be to ask around to some area colleagues in PP and get recommendations for CPAs and tax attorneys. Sitting down with pros who work with healthcare docs can help out quite a bit in this planning.
 
Psych hospitals generally have websites that have who to contact. My bet is no matther where you are...they have openings.

My plan was: start this 1099 job in ~ 3 months and in the meantime start preparing PP. I spoke to an accountant and he told me it takes up to 12 weeks to form LLC... I can't push off 1099 job to have my LLC formed. I also was told that the entire process of PP launching can take up to 9 months due to finding office address, forming llc, getting malpractice insurance, and getting on insurance panel... i obviously cannot have 0 income for 9 months straight, so i was planning on signing with 1099 job to have a small stream of income.... if i dont have any llc/pc/sp, does that mean the 1099 income just goes straight to my personal account and if anything bad happens they can come after my house?
I believe that for malpractice they can come for your house/personal property no matter what the employee status or business structure
 
I believe that for malpractice they can come for your house/personal property no matter what the employee status or business structure
Ooh........ I did not know that...... If thats the case i assume what really gives you protection is a good malpractice insurance...? Then why even have LLC? Why not just SP?
 
No one is coming after your personal property in a malpractice suit..that literally almost never happens that’s the entire point of insurance and unless you decide to punch your patient in the face for fun, no judge is going to let them take your personal property so don’t worry too much about the malpractice/liability piece
 
No one is coming after your personal property in a malpractice suit..that literally almost never happens that’s the entire point of insurance and unless you decide to punch your patient in the face for fun, no judge is going to let them take your personal property so don’t worry too much about the malpractice/liability piece
LOL laughed so hard at "punch the patient" XD i will definitely not do that
 
I definitely did 1099 a lot as a resident moonlighter without a LLC. Taxes were...rough. W2 forever for me.
 
Ooh........ I did not know that...... If thats the case i assume what really gives you protection is a good malpractice insurance...? Then why even have LLC? Why not just SP?

There are substantial tax advantages to an LLC. Go pick up a soda, and look at the corporate structure of Snapple/Pepsico/Coca-Cola's distribution arm. That's not an accident. They know what they're doing. Most wealth management services with surgeon clients know how to do this.

In an related note, it's also no coincidence that Epstein had a ranch in the only state to allow hidden LLC ownership.
 
I definitely did 1099 a lot as a resident moonlighter without a LLC. Taxes were...rough. W2 forever for me.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by taxes being rough? You will have to pay self-employment tax on your first $142,800 but you should be paid more to take this into account. In addition, you can deduct a lot of business expenses (e.g. licenses, certifications, conference, books, laptop, 3 martini lunches etc) and funnel up to $57k into a solo 401k depending on your earnings. It tends to work out better as a 1099 than W2.

I have both W2 and 1099 work. Because I make a lot from W2 work, I don't have to pay any self-employment taxes since I've maxed out my social security contributions already, and deduct my expenses and contribute a good amount to an additional retirement account. And then I get good benefits from the W2. For many people having both sources of income is the sweet spot.
 
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Shouldn't be taking 12 weeks to get a LLC set up.
That should only take like 1-7 days with your state business organization.
Don't forget you may also need a business license, in addition to the LLC.
Both the license and the LLC will have their own renewal fees.

The delay is the IRS tax ID number, called the EIN. It could be 1-5 weeks?
Once you have the IRS EIN number, now you can provide the details of a W9 form.
W9 is just the formalized form you give to whomever asks for it, to facilitate making sure they have the necessary details to procure a 1099 document at the end of the year, or for their diligence to know exactly who to cut a check out to.

Chances are the job will be the one to add you or panel you to their insurance.
If you need to do your own insurance paneling, then yes, you will need your LLC structure first before doing any insurance paneling paperwork. That will take 1-6 months depending on each insurance.
 
You are very confused, which is fine, and why you are here.

1. You can start practicing any time as a sole proprietor IMMEDIATELY, and bill using your social security number instead of EIN on W-9.

2. It doesn't take very long to get an EIN as a sole proprietor since you don't need to register it to the state govt.

3. Once you get an EIN, you can use it to get a corporate bank account, out of which you can pay for practice expenses, including malpractice. You now use EIN instead of your social security number on W-9s, to avoid identity theft.

4. LLC can take a while to get, depending on the state, especially if it's deemed to be a "professional LLC". But, this doesn't mean you can't get 1099 or generate practice income in the meantime. You don't wait to work before you get your LLC approved by the state government. You start working now, and once the LLC is approved, it technically ACQUIRES your sole proprietorship and take over the books if you want to do that.

You are the 100% owner of both businesses. You can acquire yourself and make yourself do stuff absorb any income in the fiscal year at anytime! Dance baby dance!!! IRS doesn't care as long as you count income and costs correctly and make no duplications or violate other rules (i.e. costs for a single business should be deducted against the income of that entity).

Of note, you can get an EIN for your LLC as soon as your LLC has a name (i.e. when the application is submitted). LLC need not be active at the state to receive income. However, lots of places want the active LLC status at the state to transact with you (i.e. banks, brokerage firms, etc.). If you want to enter into a private agreement such as to sign for a lease, it's also typically required for the entity to be active. You COULD sign contracts as an officer of LLC when it's inactive, but this has unknown and complicated implications if you later get sued by your creditors. For small practices, landlords typically want you personally to sign for the lease, so this issue is moot anyway.

My plan was: start this 1099 job in ~ 3 months and in the meantime start preparing PP. I spoke to an accountant and he told me it takes up to 12 weeks to form LLC... I can't push off 1099 job to have my LLC formed. I also was told that the entire process of PP launching can take up to 9 months due to finding office address, forming llc, getting malpractice insurance, and getting on insurance panel... i obviously cannot have 0 income for 9 months straight, so i was planning on signing with 1099 job to have a small stream of income.... if i dont have any llc/pc/sp, does that mean the 1099 income just goes straight to my personal account and if anything bad happens they can come after my house?

LLC liability protection is somewhat irrelevant for solo practices or a doctor who does 1099 since firstly the LLC carries little assets, and your creditors will sue you personally (say if you owe your landlord a bunch of rent and refuse to pay and declare LLC bankruptcy), secondly, your biggest creditor is malpractice, which is never protected by LLC. This is more relevant if you also own other assets--for example, if your practice owns commercial real estate, it's customary to create a new LLC to own that asset, so that your practice income is not subject to judgment against liens on that LLC. That said, plenty of friends/doctors own investment properties on their social security numbers. Your level of risk tolerance varies.

I'm not sure what your imagination is in that if something "bad" happens someone comes after your house. If you malpractice on 1099, your malpractice insurance pays. It's very rare to go beyond policy limits (you should read the White Coat Investor blog entry on this topic.) Are you planning on incurring risky business transactions on earning your 1099 income (i.e. work on a risky venture, owe a lot of money, and then be unable to pay back due to business negligence)? Or there are business liabilities that are not covered by personal umbrella insurance? What would they be?! These issues are very rare for an average practicing psychiatrist practicing average psychiatry. The common example I've heard is someone slip and falls on the stairs of your practice, which seems absurd on its face, but hey. Even THIS is covered now by my personal umbrella insurance since I own my own sole proprietorship. If you are really worried about these scenarios, the correct way to deal with it is to buy additional business liability coverage, not by delaying starting your business.

Why would you EVER push 1099 job starting date to when the state processes your LLC application? This makes no sense to me. These are parallel processes. You could have a 1099 job (or two) AND have 10 different side businesses that are in various stages of forming. Apply for insurance panels for ALL of these entities if you want. Who cares!?


The advantage of LLC for solo practice is mainly to make the books clean and flexible in tax planning. There are more advanced strategies for deferring taxable income (i.e. solo 401k, cash balance defined benefits plans, others). These strategies can save you HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS on taxes each year. Some of them are available for sole proprietors, true, but the books are cleaner if you as a natural person are separate from your employer the entity. Some brokerages require a different EIN for opening certain types of accounts. You can incorporate and tax as a C-corp, which then allows you to sell portions of your practice if you want. You can treat the LLC income as an S-corp or parternship. These are options unavailable to sole proprietors.

5. There are several plausible ways to file your final year-end tax. You can use a schedule C that would deal with one entity which is the LLC that ACQUIRED your sole proprietorship and takes in all your income, or you can have multiple entities, each of which files a schedule C. Or you can file a schedule C on your own social security number. This doesn't matter (usually). Your accountant will advise you. It's typically cleaner to have one set of books for all income and costs relating to "single business activity", and it will also affect how you have contribution limits to retirement plans. But outside of that, you can do whatever you want.


Try to understand what "legal personhood" means. You are a natural person. You can form an infinite number of legal persons.
 
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To conceptualize:

Most people file the 1040 or 1040EZ forms for themselves at tax time. The default forms.
A schedule C is a like a miniaturized focused 1040 form just for your business. It metaphorically gets 'stapled' to the 1040 once its filed.
 
If it’s just one individual I don’t see a benefit to LLC but I’m not an expert. As for W2 vs 1099 it’s about the bottom line so ensure your compensation reflects that. At this time 1099 has perks like the ability to deduct expenses and retirement funding. YMMV
I’d recommend checking out WCI message board for additional information.

 
LLC doesn’t really matter if you’re solo. Sole proprietor vs sole LLC doesn’t make a difference liability wise for physicians unless possibly as noted above you own the building you’re working out of or something (but for instance if you’re leasing office space or you’re working for an agency, it’s really their commercial liability insurance that should cover stuff like someone slipping and falling). Tax deductions seem to be pretty similar until you start running a business with employees. When you start having employees or more of a business it matters more, classic example is if your employee sexually harasses someone, having the LLC employ people helps prevent them from coming after your personal assets as the owner.

If you’re just a solo doctor doing 1099 jobs, shouldn’t matter much being sole proprietor vs LLC. Sole proprietor also eligible for pass through deduction too. Accountants like it though because it’s more complicated aka they can charge more for it.
 
Can you describe what you mean by rough??
I’ll take a guess. They didn’t realize they would need to budget for taxes that were not taken out of their paycheck so come April they had to write a big check. Hopefully they also wrote off legitimate expenses and invested the max allowed into a retirement account which softens the blow.
 
Yes, I withheld appropriately. It wasn't rough as in surprising. The rough part is knowing your employer pays half of your social security/medicare taxes when you are on a W2, ie the self employment tax. In terms of retirement accounts, your deductibility is a bit limited if you also have a W2 job with retirement benefits. Deductions are piddly for inpatient psychiatry. There's no office. Gas, license, insurance, laptop, car depreciation, maybe a biller if you're complicated, it's tiny stuff that doesn't match the OASDI taxes.
 
The sweet spot is having a w2 job in which you make enough ($142, 800) to cover 1/2 of social security taxes, and then 1099 positions for the rest of your income. You'll still also have to pay both halves of the medicare tax on the 1099 income.
 
Yes, I withheld appropriately. It wasn't rough as in surprising. The rough part is knowing your employer pays half of your social security/medicare taxes when you are on a W2, ie the self employment tax. In terms of retirement accounts, your deductibility is a bit limited if you also have a W2 job with retirement benefits. Deductions are piddly for inpatient psychiatry. There's no office. Gas, license, insurance, laptop, car depreciation, maybe a biller if you're complicated, it's tiny stuff that doesn't match the OASDI
Would you clarify the limited deductibility with retirement accounts when you have W2 and 1099? My 1099 jobs pay more than my W2 which more than accounts for the ~8% but I have also found the write offs and SEP contributions to be a bonus especially now that W2 can’t write anything off. Even if working inpatient there are deductions that add up.


For a self-employed individual, contributions are limited to 25% of your net earnings from self-employment (not including contributions for yourself), up to $58,000 (for 2021; $57,000 for 2020). You can calculate your plan contributions using the tables and worksheets in Publication 560.
 
LLC doesn’t really matter if you’re solo. Sole proprietor vs sole LLC doesn’t make a difference liability wise for physicians unless possibly as noted above you own the building you’re working out of or something (but for instance if you’re leasing office space or you’re working for an agency, it’s really their commercial liability insurance that should cover stuff like someone slipping and falling). Tax deductions seem to be pretty similar until you start running a business with employees. When you start having employees or more of a business it matters more, classic example is if your employee sexually harasses someone, having the LLC employ people helps prevent them from coming after your personal assets as the owner.

If you’re just a solo doctor doing 1099 jobs, shouldn’t matter much being sole proprietor vs LLC. Sole proprietor also eligible for pass through deduction too. Accountants like it though because it’s more complicated aka they can charge more for it.
This was my understanding as well… I’m actually surprised at how many people are pushing LLCs here… everything I read on physician finance forums (like WCI) says that for like 95% of physicians, LLC offers few if any benefits (vs sole proprietor)for physicians. S Corp maybe for some specific income scenarios but usually not.
But if there’s something I’m missing I’d love to know lol. I’m w2 for my main gig but do some 1099 moonlighting for about 30-70k a year.

also - regarding EIN, unless something changed, I was able to get mine in like 5 minutes from the irs website.
 
LLC allows for future growth. Plan to maybe expand in future to a larger practice? It's done and ready to go.

Secondly, if you plan to expand you'll have already accrued years of life in the business entity, which shapes the ability of banks to lend to you. They'll want to see a viable business entity of 2 years duration.
 
LLC allows for future growth. Plan to maybe expand in future to a larger practice? It's done and ready to go.

Secondly, if you plan to expand you'll have already accrued years of life in the business entity, which shapes the ability of banks to lend to you. They'll want to see a viable business entity of 2 years duration.

I may be mistaken but I believe a sole proprietor set up is also considered a business entity as far as lenders are concerned. Perhaps I'm either too lazy or too cheap but why do something that will be time consuming to set up and costs additional yearly fees if it is unnecessary?
 
LLC allows for future growth. Plan to maybe expand in future to a larger practice? It's done and ready to go.

Secondly, if you plan to expand you'll have already accrued years of life in the business entity, which shapes the ability of banks to lend to you. They'll want to see a viable business entity of 2 years duration.

I get what you're saying but for someone who's just doing 1099 jobs (not setting up their own practice), there's not much benefit tax wise or even business-wise to being a sole proprietor vs LLC. If you're setting up your own practice, then yes I would say there's probably a benefit to setting up an LLC from the get-go since then it does allow for easy expansion, rather than being a sole proprietor for a few years, say you want to hire a secretary the next year or hire therapists or something.
 
Is there any major advantage of 1099 over W2? Let's say based on rough calculations before-taxes, W2 pays about $100/hr and 1099 about $150-200/hr. Let's say you get health insurance through your spouse and both jobs cover malpractice for you. My understanding was that W2 pays part of your SS tax and you also get 401k/403b contribution, whereas you owe more taxes with 1099 but you can also deduct many expenses. What would be more advantageous?
 
Is there any major advantage of 1099 over W2? Let's say based on rough calculations before-taxes, W2 pays about $100/hr and 1099 about $150-200/hr. Let's say you get health insurance through your spouse and both jobs cover malpractice for you. My understanding was that W2 pays part of your SS tax and you also get 401k/403b contribution, whereas you owe more taxes with 1099 but you can also deduct many expenses. What would be more advantageous?
There shouldn't usually be a choice between the two. W2 means you are an employee (which is default), 1099 means you are a contractor. If you are a contractor, then you get to set the terms of your work. You get to set when and how much you work. You control what you do and how you do it. As an employee, you don't have much say in that (other than negotiating the contract).

You get benefits as an employee (e.g. vacation, sick leave, holidays, maternity leave able to take FMLA, professional leave, CME expenses, retirement/pension, health insurance etc). You don't get any of that as a contractor. as an employee, the employer pays half of your social security and medicare taxes. As a contractor you have to pay it all (so called self-employment tax) but only on the first $142800 (goes up each yr).

You need to do the math and see what works out better taking into account the full package of benefits including leave for vacation, sick leave etc and any additional taxes.

As mentioned above, you can also write off expenses on 1099 income that you can't as a W2 anymore.

Following the trump tax bill, it works out better for most professionals as a contractor than as an employee from a financial point of view especially if you are able to get health insurance through your spouse. but you need to run the calculations yourself.
 
Is there any major advantage of 1099 over W2? Let's say based on rough calculations before-taxes, W2 pays about $100/hr and 1099 about $150-200/hr. Let's say you get health insurance through your spouse and both jobs cover malpractice for you. My understanding was that W2 pays part of your SS tax and you also get 401k/403b contribution, whereas you owe more taxes with 1099 but you can also deduct many expenses. What would be more advantageous?

Your 1099 job should not be covering your malpractice insurance. That almost automatically would make you a W2 employee in the eyes of the IRS. 1099 jobs should not be covering insurance of any kind. That’d be like you paying for your contractors liability insurance while he builds you a new addition to your house…doesn’t make any sense.
 
I wanted to add some clarification - the 1099 and w2 jobs are different jobs. Regarding malpractice, the 1099 company says they can reimburse me for the malpractice inurance.
 
I wanted to add some clarification - the 1099 and w2 jobs are different jobs. Regarding malpractice, the 1099 company says they can reimburse me for the malpractice inurance.

You’d have to be careful about how that’s worded. If they’re going to pay you a higher hourly rate or an increased one time payment for the services youre providing…would probably be able to argue they’re just paying you for services. If it’s specifically stated in a contract that they are reimbursing you X amount for malpractice insurance then again that probably wouldn’t fly. You should also be free to choose whatever malpractice carrier you want.

Basically for a contractor job to meet the eyes of an IC in the eyes of the government, they should just be cutting you a check every few weeks/month/per job/whatever. No benefits, no PTO, no CME, etc etc. They can provide you with what you need to perform your job but that’s about it. They should not be imposing any restrictions on how often you work, when you work, etc.
 
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You’d have to be careful about how that’s worded. If they’re going to pay you a higher hourly rate or an increased one time payment for the services youre providing…would probably be able to argue they’re just paying you for services. If it’s specifically stated in a contract that they are reimbursing you X amount for malpractice insurance then again that probably wouldn’t fly. You should also be free to choose whatever malpractice carrier you want.

Basically for a contractor job to meet the eyes of an IC in the eyes of the government, they should just be cutting you a check every few weeks/month/per job/whatever. No benefits, no PTO, no CME, etc etc. They can provide you with what you need to perform your job but that’s about it. They should not be imposing any restrictions on how often you work, when you work, etc.

It's not quite as cut and dry wrt benefits as all this. The Department of Labor has opined that contractors can in fact be offered health insurance benefits and malpractice being covered does not automatically make you an employee anymore than them giving you a workstation or an office automatically makes you an employee. The determination is made based on a number of factors, but the 'setting your own work conditions' seems to be critical. If they get to dictate your schedule or how you structure your work day to a significant extent then probably the IRS is not going to be impressed with the fact your contract says you're not an employee.
 
I was leaning more towards 1099 job because it seemed very flexible with a lot of autonomy... Aside from the firm taking a percentage of what i bring in, he basically told me i can do whatever i want with accepting patients, scheduling them, structuring how much time i want to set aside for follow ups, taking time off, etc. After being in W2 job for a long time and basically being a slave (dont want to go into details... Just many bad experiences) Im thinking maybe 1099 is different? I know there is that tax burden which is a downside...
 
But again the tax burden is not a down side if the bottom line is favorable. You would benefit from doing additional research on LLC vs sole proprietorship and W2 vs 1099 prior to deciding. I would want confirmation from colleagues that the position is as autonomous as they are selling.

Also FWIW W2 jobs don’t automatically include benefits such as in the case of some part time and prn positions.
 
After being in W2 job for a long time and basically being a slave (dont want to go into details... Just many bad experiences) Im thinking maybe 1099 is different? I know there is that tax burden which is a downside...
1099 brings freedom, but freedom is not free
 
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