How do you pay yourself.

I don't run enough to clear $60,000. I like my home time. LOL

 

LOL True,.. but at least I do different receipts in different shoe boxes. One is for truck repairs, maintenance etc, one is for stuff I bought like gloves, boots, underwear, socks. The other is work related bills like cell phone, data overages, permits etc, the other will have stuff I bought for the truck like my dandy diamond tuck smokey and the bandit Snow Man steering wheel cover.

Most of why I am leased to a carrier is because I dont want to do paper work. Beyond getting a BOL signed,.. I really dont do too much paperwork.


Its really strange,.. I'm anally OCD when it comes to crawling under and over my truck and making sure tire pressures are all perfect, no air leaks, no bad hoses or lines. I'll spend hours on little things,.. but paperwork is like cryptonite to me. Matter of fact,. its my wife that takes everything to the CPA and makes sense of the mess of receipts I give her.

Hurst

 

Allow me to slide my way into this conversation gentlemen.
Is there anyone out there leased to a larger carrier who pays his drivers on a 1099 who himself gets a 1099 from the larger carrier?
Old man's got two trucks, both his, himself and two other drivers.
Makes a whole heck of a lot in revenue and has a whole heck of a lot of expenses, but always ends up owing uncle sam.
Uses one accountant to pay his drivers, and takes money from it whenever he wants and for whatever.
His accountant says he owes so much because he makes so much, and he's gotten several different opinions and the account he has been with now always gets him the lesser amount, but he still owes. Accountant is a larger company and only do trucking industry..

 

My wife does all the bookkeeping and my mother is a tax prepare, I have a sole proprietorship even when we ran 8 toter trucks and modular crews etc, we grossed several years over 2.5 million, we have never paid outrageous t a axes. We do it all ourselves, no CPA and no incorp. Taxes are no problem, you would be surprised. Cap's have an built in need to encourage u to use their services. If I got down to 65 k net, I would have a stroke,

 

If I was only making 65 k net I would drive for someone else. That was just the number the CPA through out as a threshold to inc or not. You are lucky to have a tax preparer in the family that can keep up with all the tax laws and look out for your best interest. The rest of us have to pay someone. After several years of being told if I incorporated I would save the 10 to 12 k and so when I finally did it my CPA started charging me $400 more per year. For me that was worth it. Might not be for everyone. I know enough about taxes to keep every receipt and pretty much know what I can and cannot deduct. I have separate folders for the deductions. I total them and give the CPA my totals. I also give him my bank statements and check stubs. The only inconvenience it has been is, if I need more money than I pay myself I have to write myself a check for a draw rather than just pulling it out of an ATM.
I am on a very low salary and I pay my driver on percentage. I figure his percentage and shoot that number to the CPA. He withholds the proper amount of taxes and prints the checks, wife picks them up and deposits them into mine and divers accounts. Then he also send in the payroll taxes for state and federal.... If I had the time I am sure I could do some of this but since I am also on the road during the week I don't always have the time and have other things that need tended to on weekends.

 

Don't you need to incorporate to protect your property?

 

If you are the only driver you can't separate yourself from it, the lawyers would just name you and the corp in the lawsuits. If you have employees you will have some degree of separation. I never incorporated for protection, only for the tax breaks.

 

S Corp or c Corp?

 

I am set up as an S Corp.

 

An S Corp is a "pass through" tax structure. Meaning there is no business tax, all profits or losses pass through to the owner's personal tax return just as a sole prop does. The difference is, you only pay FICA (or SE tax for sole props) on the driver's salary. The remainder of the profit you make is FICA free.

In my case, I made 72,000 but only 36,000 of that was as a "salary". I paid $5508 in FICA on that salary. Had I been a sole prop, I would've had to pay $11,016 based on the entire $72,000 earnings. Call me crazy but I'll keep that extra $5508 in my pocket any day of the week if I have the choice. The cost was $50 to the state for the LLC with a $25 renewal every year. The S Corp paperwork was free, just print it out and mail it to the IRS to request to be treated as an S Corp. That's it! I really don't understand the negativity thrown at the S Corp business structure that I usually see on this site. And I am a one truck operation also.