Can a single-member LLC have a fiscal year not as the calendar year?
I'm no tax expert by any means. I do know that a disreagarded entity is considered a sole proprietor for federal tax purposes. My understanding is that this means your personal tax year and your business tax year must be one and the same. Nevertheless, it is technically possible to have a non-calendar fiscal year as an individual. This is so rare that I'm unable to find a an IRS reference to this. The best reference I could find was this article written by two CPAs. If you really want to persue this, you basically need to talk with an accountant, since this is complicated, and required keeping propper accounting records for your personal life, in addition to your business. A ledger creqated after-the-fact by an accountant has been ruled insufficent. You really need to live by the fiscal year you choose.
No, you can not use Schedule C for a Corporation. If you treat the business as a sole proprietorship, i.e.: not a separate legal entity and not a separate financial entity - then you can. If that's how you treat your corporation, then you can continue using Schedule C, but there's no reason whatsoever to continue being a corporation either since the corporate liability protection veil is likely to be long gone. Generally, corporations file form 1120, S-Corporations file form 1120S. If it is a sole proprietorship and  you didn't make another mistake by explicitly asking the IRS to treat it as a corporation - there are no IRS forms to fill. You'll need to dissolve the LLC with your State, though, check the State's department of State/Corporations (depending on the State, the names of the departments dealing with business entities vary). You can and are supposed to report self-employment income on Schedule C (or C-EZ if eligible, which a programmer likely is) even when the payer isn't required to give you 1099-MISC (or 1099-K for a payment network now). From there, after deducting permitted expenses, it flows to 1040 (for income tax) and Schedule SE (for self-employment tax). See https://www.irs.gov/individuals/self-employed for some basics and lots of useful links. If this income is large enough your tax on it will be more than $1000, you may need to make quarterly estimated payments (OR if you also have a 'day job' have that employer increase your withholding) to avoid an underpayment penalty. But if this is the first year you have significant self-employment income (or other taxable but unwithheld income like realized capital gains) and your economic/tax situation is otherwise unchanged -- i.e. you have the same (or more) payroll income with the same (or more) withholding -- then there is a 'safe harbor': if your withholding plus estimated payments this year is too low to pay this year's tax but it is enough to pay last year's tax you escape the penalty. (You still need to pay the tax due, of course, so keep the funds available for that.) At the end of the first year when you prepare your return you will see how the numbers work out and can more easily do a good estimate for the following year(s). A single-member LLC or 'S' corp is usually disregarded for tax purposes, although you can elect otherwise, while a (traditional) 'C' corp is more complicated and AIUI out-of-scope for this Stack; see https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/business-structures for more. Yes. But once you chose the method (on your first tax return), you cannot change it without the IRS approval. Similarly the fiscal year. For individuals, I can't think of any reason why would accrual basis be better than cash, or why would an individual use a fiscal year other than the calendar year. This answer assumes you're asking about how to handle this issue in the USA. I generally downvote questions that ask about a tax/legal issue and don't bother providing the jurisdiction. In my opinion it is extremely rude. Seeing that you applied for an LLC, I think that you somehow consider it as a relevant piece of information. You also attribute some importance to the EIN which has nothing to do with your question. I'm going to filter out that noise. As an individual/sole-proprietor (whether under LLC or not), you cannot use fiscal years, only calendar years. It doesn't matter if you decide to have your LLC taxed as S-Corp as well, still calendar year. Only C-Corp can have a fiscal year, and you probably don't want to become a C-Corp. So the year ends on December 31, and whether accrual or cash - you can only deduct expenses you incurred until then. Also, you must declare the income you got until then, which in your case will be the full amount of funding - again regardless of whether you decided to be cash-based or accrual based. So the main thing you need to do is to talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your state) and learn about the tax law relevant to your business and its implications on your actions. There may be some ways to make it work better, and there are some ways in which you can screw yourself up completely in your scenario, so do get a professional advice. Maybe it's just because of the foundation date. If I start a company on August 1st, I would like its FY starts on that date too, in order to track my first whole year. Would be quite useless to finish my year on December, after just five months. I want to have data of my first year after a twelve months activity. Form 10-K is filed by corporations to SEC. You must be thinking of form 1065 (its schedule K) that a partnership (and multi-member LLC) must file with the IRS. Unless the multi-member LLC is legally dissolved, it must file this form. You're a member, so it is your responsibility, with all the other members, to make sure that the manager files all the forms, and if the manager doesn't - fire the manager and appoint another one (or, if its member managed - chose a different member to manage). If you're a sole member of the LLC - then you don't need to file any forms with the IRS, all the business expenses and credits are done on your Schedule C, as if you were a sole propriator. Through your question and then clarification through the comments, it looks like you have a U.S. LLC with at least two members.  If you did not elect some other tax treatment, your LLC will be treated as a partnership by the IRS.  The partnership should file a tax return on Form 1065.  Then each partner will get a Schedule K-1 from the partnership, which the partner should use to include their respective shares of the partnership income and expenses on their personal Forms 1040. You can also elect to be taxed as an S-Corp or a C-Corp instead of a partnership, but that requires you to file a form explicitly making such election.  If you go S-Corp, then you will file a different form for the company, but the procedure is roughly the same - Income gets passed through to the owners via a Schedule K-1.  If you go C-Corp, then the owners will pay no tax on their own Form 1040, but the C-Corp itself will pay income tax. As far as whether you should try to spend the money as business expense to avoid paying extra tax - That's highly dependent on your specific situation.  I'd think you'd want to get tailored advice for that. Your CPA doesn't need to file anything, so don't worry about him being sidetracked. You are the one doing the filing. Since the amended returns have to be filed on paper, you'll actually go and mail a package to the IRS (each return in a separate envelope). The reason the CPA suggests to file the amended returns after the current one, is to ensure the NOL is registered in the system before the amended returns are processed. The IRS doesn't have to automatically accept the amended returns, and if there's no NOL on the current year they may just bounce the amended returns back to you. Keep in mind that since you haven't filed your return by the due date (including extensions), you're now unable to forego the carry-back. I don't know if you discussed this with your CPA, but you're allowed, if you chose so, to not apply the NOL to prior years, and instead to apply it forward for the next 20 years (or until it runs out). Depending on your income pattern, that might have been something you could have considered, but you can only chose this if you file a statement before the due date (with extensions), which is now passed. "Your corporation would file a corporate income tax return on an annual basis. One single month of no revenue doesn't mean much in that annual scheme of things. Total annual revenue and total annual expenses are what impact the results. In other words, yes, your corporation can book revenues in (say) 11 of 12 months of the year but still incur expenses in all months. Many seasonal businesses operate this way and it is perfectly normal. You could even just have, say, one super-awesome month and spend money the rest of the year. Heck, you could even have zero revenue but still incur expenses—startups often work like that at first. (You'd need investment funding, personal credit, a loan, or retained earnings from earlier profitable periods to do that, of course.) As long as your corporation has a reasonable expectation of a profit and the expenses your corporation incurs are valid business expenses, then yes, you ought to be able to deduct those expenses from your revenue when figuring taxes owed, regardless of whether the expenses were incurred at the same approximate time as revenue was booked—as long as the expense wasn't the acquisition of a depreciable asset. Some things your company would buy—such as the computer in your example—would not be fully deductible in the year the expense is incurred. Depreciable property expenses are deducted over time according to a schedule for the kind of property. The amount of depreciation expense you can claim for such property each year is known as Capital Cost Allowance. A qualified professional accountant can help you understand this. One last thing: You wrote ""write off"". That is not the same as ""deduct"". However, you are forgiven, because many people say ""write off"" when they actually mean ""deduct"" (for tax purposes). ""Write off"", rather, is a different accounting term, meaning where you mark down the value of an asset (e.g. a bad loan that will never be repaid) to zero; in effect, you are recognizing it is now a worthless asset. There can be a tax benefit to a write-off, but what you are asking about are clearly expense deductions and not write-offs. They are not the same thing, and the next time you hear somebody using ""write off"" when they mean ""deduction"", please correct them." No. But the scenario is unrealistic. No bank will give the LLC any loan unless the members personally co-sign to guarantee it. In which case, the members become personally liable in addition to the LLC. "Do I understand correctly, that we still can file as ""Married filing   jointly"", just add Schedule C and Schedule SE for her? Yes. Business registration information letter she got once registered   mentions that her due date for filing tax return is January 31, 2016.   Does this prevent us from filing jointly (as far as I understand, I   can't file my income before that date)? IRS sends no such letters. IRS also doesn't require any registration. Be careful, you might be a victim to a phishing attack here. In any case, sole proprietor files a regular individual tax return with the regular April 15th deadline. Do I understand correctly that we do not qualify as ""Family   partnership"" (I do not participate in her business in any way other   than giving her money for initial tools/materials purchase)? Yes. Do I understand correctly that she did not have to do regular   estimated tax payments as business was not expected to generate income   this year? You're asking or saying? How would we know what she expected? In any case, you can use your withholding (adjust the W4) to compensate." Well, consult with a CPA, but I guess you don't have to pay taxes on 2012 with a correct accounting system since this is the money you are going to completely earn within 2013 so you can record it as future earning which is called deferred revenue or advance payments or unearned revenue. Most likely your accounting is cash basis, not accrual, so it's pretty tough to do unless you resort to the dodgy methods discussed so often by the tax avoidance enthusiasts.  There is a difference between a CPA service and a tax lawyer, perhaps you need to know one of the latter. "(I'm assuming USA tax code as this is untagged) As the comments above suggest there is no ""right"" answer or easy formula.  The main issue is that you likely got into business to make money and if you make money consistently you will pay taxes.  Reinvesting generally should be a business decision where the main concern is revenue growth and taxes are an important but secondary concern. Taxes can be complicated, but for a small LLC shouldn't be that bad.  I highly recommend that you take some time closely analyze your business and personal taxes for the previous year.  Once you understand the problem better, you can optimize around it.  If it is a big concern, some companies buy software so they can estimate their taxes periodically through the year and make better decisions."