What corporation tax am I required to pay as an independent contractor?
"The difference between the provincial/territorial low and high corporate income tax rates is clear if you read through the page you linked: Lower rate The lower rate applies to the income eligible for the federal small   business deduction. One component of the small business deduction is   the business limit. Some provinces or territories choose to use the   federal business limit. Others establish their own business limit. Higher rate The higher rate applies to all other income.    [emphasis mine] Essentially, you pay the lower rate only if your income qualifies for the federal small business deduction (SBD).  If you then followed the small business deduction link in the same page, you'd find the SBD page describing ""active business income"" from a business carried on in Canada as qualifying for the small business deduction.  If your corporation is an investment vehicle realizing passive investment income, generally that isn't considered ""active business income."" Determining if your business qualifies for the SBD isn't trivial — it depends on the nature of your business and the kind and amount of income it generates.  Talk to a qualified corporate tax accountant. If you're looking at doing IT contracting, also pay close attention to the definition of ""personal services business"", which wouldn't qualify for the SBD.  Your accountant should be able to advise you how best to conduct your business in order to qualify for the SBD.  Don't have a good accountant?  Get one.  I wouldn't operate as an incorporated IT contractor without one. I'll also note that the federal rate you would pay would also differ based on whether or not you qualified for the SBD.  (15% if you didn't qualify, vs. 11% if you qualify.)   The combined corporate income tax rate for a Canadian-controlled private corporation in Ontario that does qualify for the small business deduction would be 11% + 4.5% = 15.5% (in 2013). Additional reading:"
"It's likely you don't have to make estimated tax payments if this is your first year of contracting (extra income), and your existing salary is already having taxes withheld. If you look at the 1040-ES: General Rule In most cases, you must pay estimated tax for 2014 if both  of the   following apply. This is easier to understand if you look at the worksheet.  Look at line 14b/14c and the associated instructions.  14b is your required annual payment based on last year's tax.  14c is the lesser of that number and 14a, so 14b is your ""worst case"".  14c is the amount of tax you need to prepay (withholding counts as prepayment). I'm going to apply this to your situation based on my understanding, because it's not easy to parse:" I heard that a C-Corp being a one person shop (no other employees but the owner) can pay for the full amount 100% of personal rent if the residence is being used as a home office. Sure. Especially if you don't mind being audited. Technically, it doesn't matter how the money gets where it goes as long as the income tax filings accurately describe the tax situation. But the IRS hates it when you make personal expenses from a business account, even if you've paid the required personal income tax (because their computers simply aren't smart enough to keep up with that level of chaos). Also, on a non-tax level, commingling of business and personal funds can reduce the effectiveness of your company's liability protection and you could more easily become personally liable if the company goes bankrupt. From what I understand the 30% would be the expense, and the 70% profit distribution. I recommend you just pay yourself and pay the rent from your personal account and claim the allowed deductions properly like everyone else. Why & when it would make sense to do this? Are there any tax benefits? Never, because, no. You would still have to pay personal income tax on your 70% share of the rent (the 30% you may be able to get deductions for but the rules are quite complicated and you should never just estimate). The only way to get money out of a corporation without paying personal income tax is by having a qualified dividend. That's quite complicated - your accounting has to be clear that the money being issued as a qualified dividend came from an economic profit, not from a paper profit resulting from the fact that you worked hard without paying yourself market value. "TL;DR: Get a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) for tax issues, and a lawyer for the Operating Agreement, labor law and contract related issues. Some things are not suitable for DIY unless you know exactly what you're doing. We both do freelance work currently just through our personal names.   What kind of taxes are we looking into paying into the business   (besides setup of everything) compared to being a self proprietor?   (I'm seeing that the general answer is no, as long as income is <200k,   but not certain). Unless you decide to have your LLC taxed as a corporation, there's no change in taxes. LLC, by default, is a pass-through entity and all income will flow to your respective tax returns. From tax perspective, the LLC will be treated as a partnership. It will file form 1065 to report its income, and allocate the income to the members/partners on schedules K-1 which will be given to you. You'll use the numbers on the K-1 to transfer income allocated to you to your tax returns and pay taxes on that. Being out of state, will she incur more taxes from the money being now   filtered through the business? Your employee couldn't care less about your tax problems. She will continue receiving the same salary whether you are a sole proprietor or a LLC, or Corporatoin. What kind of forms are we looking into needing/providing when   switching to a LLC from freelance work? Normally we just get 1099's,   what would that be now? Your contract counterparts couldn't care less about your tax problems. Unless you are a corporation, people who pay you more than $600 a year must file a 1099. Since you'll be a partnership, you'll need to provide the partnership EIN instead of your own SSN, but that's the only difference. Are LLC's required to pay taxes 4 times per year? We would definitely   get an accountant for things, but being as this is side work, there   will be times where we choose to not take on clients, which could   cause multiple months of no income. Obviously we would save for when   we need to pay taxes, but is there a magic number that says ""you must   now pay four times per year"". Unless you choose to tax your LLC as a corporation, LLC will pay no taxes. You will need to make sure you have enough withholding to cover for the additional income, or pay the quarterly estimates. The magic number is $1000. If your withholding+estimates is $1000 less than what your tax liability is, you'll be penalized, unless the total withholding+estimates is more than 100% of your prior year tax liability (or 110%, depending on the amounts). The LLC would be 50% 50%, but that work would not always be that. We   will be taking on smaller project through the company, so there will   be times where one of us could potentially be making more money. Are   we setting ourselves up for disaster if one is payed more than the   other while still having equal ownership? Partnerships can be very flexible, and equity split doesn't have to be the same as income, loss or assets split. But, you'll need to have a lawyer draft your operational agreement which will define all these splits and who gets how much in what case. Make sure to cover as much as possible in that agreement in order to avoid problems later." There are many different types of 1099 forms. Since you are comparing it to a W-2, I'm assuming you are talking about a 1099-MISC form.  Independent contractor income If you are a worker earning a salary or wage, your employer reports   your annual earnings at year-end on Form W-2. However, if you are an   independent contractor or self-employed you will receive a Form   1099-MISC from each client that pays you at least $600 during the tax   year. For example, if you are a freelance writer, consultant or   artist, you hire yourself out to individuals or companies on a   contract basis. The income you receive from each job you take should   be reported to you on Form 1099-MISC. When you prepare your tax   return, the IRS requires you to report all of this income and pay   income tax on it. So even if you receive a 1099-MISC form, you are required to pay taxes on it. "The ""independent contractor"" vs. ""employee"" distinction is a red herring to this discussion and not at all important just because someone suggested you use your LLC to do the job. Corp-2-Corp is a very common way to do contracting and having an LLC with business bank accounts provides you with more tax deductions (such as deducting interest on credit lines). Some accounting practices prefer to pay entities by their Tax ID numbers, instead of an individual's social security number. The actual reasoning behind this would be dubious, but the LLC only benefits you and gives you more advantages by having one than not. For example, it is easier for you to hire subcontractors through your LLC to assist with your job, due to the opaqueness of the private entity. Similarly, your LLC can sign Non Disclosure and Intellectual Property agreements, automatically extending the trade secrets to all of its members, as opposed to just you as an individual. By signing whatever agreement with the company that is paying you through your LLC, your LLC will be privy to all of this. Next, assuming you did have subcontractors or other liability inducing assets, the LLC limits the liability you personally have to deal with in a court system, to an extent. But even if you didn't, the facelessness of an LLC can deter potential creditors, for example, your client may just assume you are a cog in a wheel - a random employee of the LLC - as opposed to the sole owner. Having a business account for the LLC keeps all of your expenses in one account statement, making your tax deductions easier. If you had a business credit line, the interest is tax deductible (compared to just having a personal credit card for business purposes). Regarding the time/costs of setting up and managing an LLC, this does vary by jurisdiction. It can negligible, or it can be complex. You also only have to do it once. Hire an attorney to give you a head start on that, if you feel that is necessary. Now back to the ""independent contractor"" vs. ""employee"" distinction: It is true that the client will not be paying your social security, but they expect you to charge more hourly than an equivalent actual employee would, solely because you don't get health insurance from them or paid leave or retirement plans or any other perk, and you will receive the entire paycheck without any withheld by the employer. You also get more tax deductions to utilize, although you will now have self employment tax (assuming you are a US citizen), this becomes less and less important the higher over $105,000 you make, as it stops being counted (slightly more complicated than that, but self employment tax is it's own discussion)." Hey, sole proprietorships called (don't those comprise roughly 50% of all businesses?) they want to know what corporate tax is.  Hell, most of them want to know what payroll tax is.  They just know it's not fun paying both halves of it.  From my perspective over on the incorporated side: Oh HEY, I'm incorporated as an S-Corp or and LLC -remember those?- and they're going to suck out five percent MORE of my GROSS.  I'll fax you my cash flows statement.  It's going to look like a severed artery.  For those lucky enough to be joining us from the C-Corp world, enjoy trying to retain your key employees without seeing your payroll costs go through the roof.  If you have all your employees by the balls because they don't have the skills to easily transfer [if you think you do, hint: you don't] then I hope you have the stomach to watch them all falling further and further behind and into debt.   I don't. It makes no difference for tax purposes. If you are 1099, you will pay the same amount of taxes as if you formed a corporation and then paid yourself (essentially you are doing this as a 1099 contractor, just not formally). Legally, I don't know the answer.  I would assume you have some legal protections by forming an LLC but practically I think this won't make any difference if you get sued. PSB taxed at higher rates. PSB is taxed at 39.5% in Ontario, as the article mentioned. But if you pay all the net income to yourself as salary, you expense it and zero it out on the corporate level. So who cares what tax rate it is if the taxable income is zero? No-one. Same goes for the US, by the way. Personal Service Corporations are taxed at flat 35% Federal tax rate. But if you pour all the income into your salary - its moot, because there's no net income to pay tax of. If it's too complicated to figure out, maybe it would be wise to hire a tax accountant to provide counsel to you before you make decisions about your business. They believe that it reduces the risk that Revenue Canada will deem you to be an employee and make them pay a whole pile of tax, EI, CPP and so on that should have been paid if you had been hired as an employee. It's my recollection that the employer gets dinged for both the employee and employer share of those withholdings (and generally the employer's share is larger than yours) so they really want to prevent it. There's a Revenue Canada publication about whether you're an employee or not. There's nothing on it about being incorporated, but still employers feel more protected when their contracts are incorporated.  We did work as a sole proprietorship at the very beginning, so that we could deduct our losses against employment income earned earlier in the year, before we started the business. You can find clients who will take you on. We incorporated once the losses were over with (basically we had bought the equipment and office supplies we needed to get started.) It's a simple and relatively inexpensive thing to do, and gives clients a sense of protection. It won't protect you from your own poor decisions since you'll be a director of the firm. Do you need to incorporate? This depends on whether the company prefers you to be incorporated.  If you are going through a recruiting company, some of them are willing to deal with non-incorporated people (Sole Proprietor) and withhold taxes from your cheques for you. If you do want to incorporate, you can do it yourself, go through a paralegal, or you can even do it online.  I did mine in Ontario for about $300 (no name search - i just have a numbered corporation like 123456 Ontario Inc.) through www.oncorp.com - there are other sites that do it as well. Things to consider - if you're contracting through a corporation you most likely need to: Talk to an accountant about these for clarification - most of them will give you an initial consultation for free. Generally speaking, accountant fees for corporate filing taxes averages about $1000-2000 a year. In the US we have social security taxes, where for a full time employee the company pays half and the employee pays half.  When you work as a business, what we call 1099 for the form that the wages are reported on, then the contractor pays the full amount of social security tax. There are times when a contractor can negotiate a higher rate because the company does not have to pay that tax.  However, most of the time the company just prefers to negotiate the rate based on your value.  If you are a 60K year guy, then that is what they will pay you.  From the company's perspective it does not matter what your tax rate is, only the value you can bring to the company.  If you can add about 180K to the bottom line, then they will be happy to pay you 60K, and you should be happy to get it. Here in the US a contractor can expect to make about 7.5% more of an equivalent employee because of the social security tax savings to the company.  However, not all companies are willing to provide that in compensation.  Some companies see the legal and administrative costs of employees as normal, and the same costs with contractors as extra so they don't perceive a cost savings.  There are other things that would preclude employers from giving the bump although it is logical to do so. First you will really have to feel out your employer for the attitude on the subject.  Then I would make a logical case if they are open to providing extra compensation in return for tax savings.  If I am an employee at 60K, you would also have to pay the government 18K.  How about you pay me 75K as a contractor instead? That would be a great deal for all in the US. Couple of points about being a consultant in the US: It sounds like the rules for what you can deduct may be more lax in Italy.  For example, you can deduct a certain percentage of your home for work but the rules are relatively strict on your use of that space and how much is deductible.  Also things like clothes, restaurants, phones, car use, etc must follow IRS guidelines to be deductible.  This often means they are used exclusively for work and are required for work.  A meal you eat by yourself is not generally deductible, for example.  Any expense you would have had anyway if you were not working is generally not deductible. A contractor in the US can organize in various ways, including sole proprietorship, an S-corp, and a C-corp.  Each has different tax and regulatory implications.  In the simple case of a sole proprietorship, one must pay not only regular income tax but also self-employment tax, which is the part of social security and medicare tax normally paid for by one's employer.  Estimated taxes must be paid to the government quarterly and then the actual amount due synced up at the end of the year (with the government sending you the difference or vice versa). Generally speaking contractors may set aside more money pre-tax for retirement and have better investment options.  This is because solo 401(k) retirement accounts are cost-effective and flexible and the contractor can set aside the full $18K pre-tax as well as having the company contribute generously (pre-tax) to the retirement account.  Contractors can also easily employ spouses and set aside even more. The details of how frequently you are paid as a contractor and how much notice (if any) the company must give you before terminating your relationship are negotiated between you and the company and are generally pretty flexible.  You could get paid your whole year salary in a lump sum if you wanted.  The company that is paying you will not normally give you any benefits whatsoever...in this way it is the same situation as it is in Italy. By the way the three points you mention in your edit are definitely not true in the US. "From the IRS page on Estimated Taxes (emphasis added): Taxes must be paid as you earn or receive income during the year, either through withholding or estimated tax payments. If the amount of income tax withheld from your salary or pension is not enough, or if you receive income such as interest, dividends, alimony, self-employment income, capital gains, prizes and awards, you may have to make estimated tax payments. If you are in business for yourself, you generally need to make estimated tax payments. Estimated tax is used to pay not only income tax, but other taxes such as self-employment tax and alternative minimum tax. I think that is crystal clear that you're paying income tax as well as self-employment tax. To expand a bit, you seem to be confusing self-employment tax and estimated tax, which are not only two different things, but two different kinds of things.  One is a tax, and the other is just a means of paying your taxes. ""Self-employment tax"" refers to the Social Security and Medicare taxes that you must pay on your self-employment income.  This is an actual tax that you owe.  If you receive a W-2, half of it is ""invisibly"" paid by your employer, and half of it is paid by you in the form of visible deductions on your pay stub.  If you're self-employed, you have to pay all of it explicitly. ""Estimated tax"" does not refer to any actual tax levied on anyone.  A more pedantically correct phrasing would be ""estimated tax payment"".  Estimated taxes are just payments that you make to the IRS to pay tax you expect to owe.  Whether you have to make such payments depends on how much tax you owe and whether you've paid it by other means.  You may need to pay estimated tax even if you're not self-employed, although this would be unusual.  (It could happen, for instance, if you realized large capital gains over the year.)  You also may be self-employed but not need to pay estimated tax (if, for instance, you also have a W-2 job and you reduce your withholding allowances to have extra tax withheld). That said, if you earn significant income from self-employment, you'll likely have to make estimated tax payments.  These are prepayments of the income tax and Social Security/Medicare taxes you accrue based on your self-employment income. As Pete B. mentioned in his answer, a possible reason that your estiamtes are low is because some taxes have already been withheld from the paychecks you received so far during the year (while you were an employee).  These represent tax payments you've already made; you don't need to pay that money a second time, but you may need to make estimated tax payments for your income going forward." Supposedly this also means that I am free from having to pay   California corporate taxes? Not in the slightest. Since you (the corporate employee) reside in CA - the corporation is doing business in CA and is liable for CA taxes. Or, does this mean I am required to pay both CA taxes and Delaware   fees? (In this case, minimal, just a paid agent from incorporate.com) I believe DE actually does have corporate taxes, check it out. But the bottom line is yes, you're liable for both CA and DE costs of doing corporate business (income taxes, registered agents, CA corp fee, etc). Is there any benefit at all for me to be a Delaware C-Corp or should I   dissolve and start over. Or just re-incorporate as California LLC Unless you intend to go public anytime soon or raise money from VCs/investors - there's no benefit whatsoever in incorporating in DE. You should seek a legal advice with an attorney, of course, since benefits are legal issues (usually related to choosing jurisdiction for litigation etc). If you're a one-person freelancer, doing C-Corp was not the best decision as well. Tax-wise you'd be much better off with a S-Corp, or a LLC - both pass-through and have no (Federal) entity-level taxes. Corporate rates are generally higher than individual rates, and less deductions can be taken. In California, check with a CPA/EA licensed in the State, since both S-Corp and LLC would be taxed, and taxed differently. "Whenever you do paid work for a company, you will need to fill out some sort of paperwork so that the company knows how to pay you, and also how to report how much they paid you to the appropriate government agencies. You should not think of this as a ""hurdle"" and you shouldn't worry that you haven't been employed for a long time. The two most common ways a company pays an individual are via employee wages, or ""independent contractor"" payments. When you start a relationship with a company, if you are going to become an employee, then you will out a W4 form, and at the end of the year you will receive a W2 form. If you are an independent contractor, (which you would be considered in this case), you will fill out form W9 and at the end of the year you will receive a 1099. This is completely normal and you have nothing to worry about. All it means is that if you make more than a certain amount (typically $600) in a year, you will receive a 1099 in the mail or electronically. The 1099 form basically means that they are reporting that amount to the IRS, and it also helps you file your tax return by showing you all the numbers you need on one form. Please remember that when you are paid as an independent contractor, no taxes are withheld on your behalf, so you may owe some tax on the money you make. It's best to set aside some of your income so you are prepared to pay it come tax time next year."