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October 23, 2024 14 mins

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Confused about transferring money from your business to personal accounts? Whether you run a partnership, S-corp, sole proprietorship, or partnership, we'll guide you through owner distributions and explain why these transfers aren't classified as expenses. 

This episode is a must-listen for business owners confused on how to account for owner distributions and how they work! Tune in and empower yourself with the knowledge to tackle owner distributions head-on.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
all of a sudden, if you took $100,000 distribution,
I'm going to be telling you thatyou have $100,000 more in
profit than you thought you did.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And you might be a little angry with me, but
Because it's adding it as anexpense and it is not an expense
when you take money out of yourbusiness.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Right Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've
created this podcast to helpguide you through it all and
make you feel like you have aCPA in your back pocket.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm Carson Sands.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
And I'm Taryn Sands.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping
people start and grow theirbusinesses.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and
entrepreneurship.
Taxes suck and we want to makesure you don't pay more than
your fair share.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to
know.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
In a fun and easy to understand way.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Let's get started.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Let's do it.
So today we're going to talkabout a very, very exciting
subject that we see a lot ofpeople make mistakes on, and,
though it may not be super funto learn about it, it is very
important, and I think we'veseen this pop up so many times

(01:25):
lately that we both knew thatthere needed to be an episode
about it, and that is all aboutowner distributions.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
This is an important one, because a lot of people
don't take money out of theirbusiness.
They leave it in there thinkingthat you know I'm going to need
that money.
I want to keep reinvesting itback into the business.
And then they wonder how theycould possibly owe taxes
whenever they didn't actuallytake any money out of the
business.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yes, and that came up a lot this tax season and
people just confused when?
When is the money getting taxed?
How do I account for an ownerdistribution?
What exactly is it?
Does it have to be a transfer?
You know All of these differentquestions.
So that's why we knew we neededan episode on that, and we're
going to start with the basicsand then we'll explain all of

(02:10):
these questions and how itapplies to your accounting for
your business.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Now to be clear this applies to partnerships, s-corps
and single member LLCs, alongwith just sole proprietorship
businesses.
This does not apply to C-Corps.
I just wanted to put that outthere.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Which almost no one is still having a C-Corp right
now, at least people that wework with, but some people do
very few Right.
So first off, let's just breakit down.
What exactly is an ownerdistribution?

Speaker 1 (02:39):
if you're listening and you don't know exactly what
we're talking about,Distribution just means that you
take money out of the businessaccount and somehow put it into
your personal account.
That can be writing yourself acheck from the business.
It can be transferring themoney from your business account
to your personal bank accountjust directly online.

(03:00):
There's a lot of ways that youcan do that, but you move money
from the business account toyour personal account and that's
a distribution.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
So that's the first kind of confusion is well, I
transferred money from mybusiness account to my personal
account.
Is that a distribution?
Yes.
Or I wrote myself a check toget some cash out of the bank
account.
Is that a distribution?
Yes?

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Now for an S-corp.
There are other ways you canget money out of the business
and into your personal account,because S-corp owners also have
to pay themselves a salary.
That's not what we're talkingabout today.
That's usually a pretty cleardistinction, because that money
is on a paycheck.
You pay payroll taxes on itquarterly or monthly and you
would have a W-2 for that.

(03:45):
This is other money that youtake out of your company through
a distribution.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, so definitely not payroll, but anything else
you take out.
Also, we see this a lot andthis happens in our business too
.
Let's say I went to the moviesand I accidentally used the
business account.
I use that debit card insteadof my personal card when we're
going through the bookkeepingand Carson sees like, oh, I use
it at the movie theater, he'sgoing to mark that as an owner

(04:11):
distribution because that is nota taxable expense for our
business and it justaccidentally got in there.
So that's just us taking moneyout of the account, even though
it wasn't a transfer, it wasn'ta check.
It's still an ownerdistribution when we're
accounting for it.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Right, and there's no rules against doing that.
It's just we advise people notto, because it's a lot cleaner
and easier to keep everythingseparate for purposes of
accounting and keeping the books.
But it does happen.
You pull out the wrong card oryou only have the business card
for some reason and you justhave to get something.
Right now and it's not businessrelated.
Just make sure to mark it as adistribution in your books and

(04:50):
then you haven't done anythingwrong.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
It basically means that you took money out of the
business.
That's right Money.
That was not for a specificexpense.
It literally was just for youto use that money.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
So the next question people have on this is is that
taxable?
Not exactly.
So.
The money that you make in yourbusiness is taxable to you,
whether you take the money outof the business account or leave
it in there, and so takingthese distributions is great for
a lot of reasons.
First of all, you're alreadybeing taxed on the money as if
you did earn it, and so youmight as well take it out of the

(05:22):
business and have use of it forpersonal use.
Taking that distribution alsoprotects that money from
liability if you're in an LLC ora corporation of some sort.
But no, it's not taxable.
It doesn't change your taxes atall if you make that
distribution from your businessto your personal account.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
I think that is where lots of people are confused
because they're not reallylooking at it from, I guess,
like a tax standpoint.
But it just makes sense becauseif you made $100,000 in profit
that year, when you file thatreturn you're paying taxes on
that profit.
They don't really care if themoney's sitting in the business

(06:01):
account still or you took it outYou're still going to pay your
taxes on that profit.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Right, and if you think about it, it makes sense,
because S-Corps and partnershipsdon't pay taxes.
They're what's called conduitentities or a flow-through
entity, just meaning that theprofits from that company flow
through to your personal taxreturn and that's where the
taxes are reported.
If you only paid taxes when youpulled money out well, the IRS
is wise to you on that thatwould be a neat trick, right?

(06:28):
Like hey, I'll just never takemoney out of my company and then
I'll never have to pay taxes.
But that wouldn't work.
So you do get taxed on theincome immediately when you earn
it, whether you leave it in thebusiness account or not.
Now, likewise, thatdistribution to your personal
account is not a deduction forthe business, it's not income to
you personally, but it's not adeduction or an expense on the

(06:50):
business tax return.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
And that is another thing.
We see a lot with accounting.
So what the heck?
How do you correctly accountfor these owner distributions If
you know what they are now like?
What exactly do you do withthem when you see them pop up on
your bookkeeping?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
That's a great question and this is why I don't
care what you call them.
What you call the distributionsis fine, but I'm going to tell
you the different terms that areused, and it's not because I
care which ones you use, butbecause you'll see different
terminology used on QuickBooksdepending on whether you set it
up as a sole proprietorship, anLLC, an S-corp or a partnership.

(07:26):
You might see thesedistributions called different
things.
All of these terms mean theexact same thing, and so here
they are Shareholderdistribution, partner
distribution distribution,member disbursement, members
draw owners.
Draw owners pay in personalexpense.
You'll see that one a lot onQuickBooks.

(07:47):
I actually hate that last onebecause it's very confusing and
the confusion we were justtalking about about how that's
not really pay to you, that'staxable income.
It really confuses peoplewhenever they use that
terminology.
But nevertheless, I wanted topoint that one out because you
will see that if you set up yourQuickBooks file as a sole
proprietorship, a lot of timesyou'll see it called owner's pay

(08:08):
and personal expense.
Again, that's just adistribution.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
And whenever you're using QuickBooks, you obviously
want to make sure thesedistributions go into the right
category, because then that canmess up your books completely.
So what do you see people do,and how does that affect their
financial statements when theymake that mistake?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Well, if they try to run it through the profit and
loss, it makes it look like theymade a lot less money than they
did, which of course when we gofix it the books, all of a
sudden you're you know, if youtook a hundred thousand dollar
distribution, I'm going to betelling you that you have a
hundred thousand more in profitthan you thought you did.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
And you might be a little angry with me, but
because it it's adding it as anexpense and it is not an expense
when you take money out of yourbusiness.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Right, and so in QuickBooks or in any bookkeeping
software, there's five types ofaccounts that can even exist.
Every single category oftransaction goes into one of
these Income, expense, asset,liability and equity and you
don't have to remember all that,but it is important to know
those five, just so you'll knowthat distributions are an equity

(09:18):
type of account, so they don'tgo into the expense category.
The only other thing thatyou'll really see in the equity
that you can really have anyinfluence over anyway is
contributions, and we did wantto mention those briefly as well
.
They're very similar todistributions, except it's when
you put money into your company.
This happens sometimes.
If you don't have enough moneyin there and you need to buy

(09:39):
something, you can put personalfunds into the business and then
buy the asset out of thebusiness.
That's the best way to do it.
Anyway, that's called acontribution.
That's also an equity type ofaccount and, just like the
distributions, it doesn't reallychange your taxes.
It's not income to the businessand it's not deductible by the

(10:00):
owner.
It's just putting money intothe business.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
When we first started our business in 2016, there
were so many things that I knewwe needed to get set up.
We needed to build an emaillist, we needed a website, we
needed ways to set appointmentswith our clients, and it seemed
very overwhelming, especiallyfor someone like me who is not
very tech savvy.
We stumbled our way through allof this and did a little bit

(10:31):
here and there, and it was avery long and complicated
process.
But just recently we found outabout something called a stand
store, and it is a all-in-onebusiness tool that gives you
everything that you need tostart, and I wish we would have
had this sooner.
This would have made things sosimple from the beginning.

(10:53):
Stanstore will build your emaillist for you.
You can also upload a digitalproduct webinar or any other
training that you have forclients or potential clients.
You can do email marketing,create memberships so many
things with StanStore.
Stanstore is incredibly easy torun.
I got a product on there withinabout 15 minutes and set it up.

(11:18):
You can accept payments throughthere.
It really is an all-in-onesoftware that makes it easy for
business owners to sell digitalproducts, have a website, have
various links in there and do itvery easily.
You don't have to hire someoneto create a stand store.
If you want to check it out,they do offer a 14 day free

(11:38):
trial and I will put the link inthe show notes for you to check
it out.
I promise you, if you use itonce, you're going to love it.
Now back to the show.
To sum it up, where we seepeople struggle with this is
that you can take as much moneyout of your business as you

(12:00):
would like.
If you, if you say that you need, let's say, ten thousand
dollars to run your business ona monthly basis and you feel
comfortable having like 30,000and it's getting really high,
like it's getting to 50, you cantake that out whenever you want
.
Just make sure that when you'redoing your accounting, that you

(12:21):
are accounting for it properlyso that it doesn't look like
it's an expense in your business, because we do see that a lot.
And then, whenever you aregetting your items together for
your tax return for your CPA, ifyou're not using QuickBooks, we
kind of already talked aboutwhat happens if you mistakenly
put that into the wrong categoryin QuickBooks.

(12:41):
But if you're not usingQuickBooks, make sure that you
have a line item and let themknow what your owner
distributions were or your ownercontributions were for the year
, so that it's clear what wastaken out and that it's not in
some sort of weird category,because they actually do need to
know what was taken out and youcan track those separately so

(13:02):
you might have a list of whatyou spent advertising, contract,
labor, all of those things youcan have just a line item of.
Here's what I took out as ownerdistributions.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Right.
Even though they aren'tdirectly going to affect your
income or expense for the year,they are important.
We do track them for otherpurposes that I won't get into
because they're boring andcomplicated, but just know that
they are important.
So make sure to let us knowexactly what that amount is.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Exactly.
Hopefully this episode helpsyou clear up how to present that
when you're doing your taxreturn, so that your tax return
is accurate, but also makes yourealize what those are and that
you can take that extra moneyout of your account and you're
not going to be taxed on itright then, and how the taxes
work on that.
So hopefully now you know.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Well, until next time .
Thank you for listening to.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
What your CPA Wants you to.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Know Podcast.
This podcast is intended toprovide accounting and tax
information for educationalpurposes only.
All tax situations are uniqueand should be handled with the
assistance of a tax professional.
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