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Ask HN: Anyone done payroll for a one person LLC?

2 points by adamlangsner ↗ HN
I have a single member LLC that I'm filing as an S-Corp to reduce my taxes.

Now that I'm going to be an employee of my company I looked into some payroll solutions (Quickbooks, JustWorks, Gusto) and was surprised at some of the pricing for a single person.

I did some research and it doesn't seem too difficult to do a basic payroll (no benefits, payed quarterly) for just yourself, it seems like it's a few forms: some quarterly, some at tax time.

For a basic payroll is it worth it to pay $500 - $600 / yr, when you can do it yourself? Am I underestimating the complexity of payroll or am I missing some aspect that I can't do myself?

helpful articles I found:

https://evergreensmallbusiness.com/quick-and-dirty-payroll-for-one-person-s-corps/

https://www.patriotsoftware.com/payroll/training/blog/small-business-payroll-program-irs-forms/

7 comments

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mattbillenstein
If you don't have a tax consultant, get one; you can pay and deduct these expenses out of the business.

I do a monthly transfer from my business to personal checking within the same bank - it's free - takes less than a minute per month.

I dump my bank transactions as csv and drop them into a google sheet - this gets handed off to my tax consultant at the end of the year.

My tax consultant tells me when to pay payroll taxes -- either quarterly or I might just lump it into the last couple quarters of the year depending on how my situation for the year is shaping up. I login to eftps and edd and do this manually - again, doesn't take that long.

It's lightweight for one person - I never thought to use a service to manage it.

adamlangsner
Thanks! I do have a tax consultant, but he charge's extra to do payroll, which is why I'm exploring how difficult it'd be.

Do you know if there's one time setup forms I need to file for employment at the federal level, like forms to tell the IRS that you now have an employee or register as an employer. Or do you just start paying payroll taxes each quarter?

mattbillenstein
I forget exactly what forms - like a w4 is standard, but I don't know when or what else there might be.

Your tax consultant is charging extra to execute the payments or just to compute how much to pay?

I pay my person maybe $1-2k per year at filing time - it's pretty low touch otherwise, maybe a random question here or there in the year, and we touch base in Q4 about roughly what needs to happen. I consider it money well spent.

adamlangsner
I think the extra cost is to do the quarterly tax filings, set up employee payments, handle W2s, etc at both state and federal levels
sharemywin
Don't forget Workers comp, unemployment, state, local school district taxes.

I've used this before: http://www.realtaxtools.com/W2-Mate.html

Though I regretted it and wished I would have just paid the money. Software is pretty good just would have rather focused on the business.

adamlangsner
What do you currently use?
sharemywin
paychecks was pretty good, but I had between 15-20 employees(varied) at the time.