Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

Please send me to the correct forum for this post, if it doesn't belong here.

Does anyone have any information on the advantages of a professional poker player declaring themselves as a corporation for tax purposes?

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

I can't really think of where this would go. There have been some tax articles in the Magazine lately, perhaps there's a thread in that forum where this would fit.

Regards,

T

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

This site should be helpful.

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

arent you going to pay double taxes as a corp? the income is taxed at the corp level, then taxed when you withdrawal it from the corp as personal income, etc.

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

[ QUOTE ]
arent you going to pay double taxes as a corp? the income is taxed at the corp level, then taxed when you withdrawal it from the corp as personal income, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, sub-chapter S corporations and limited liability corps (ie, most small businesses) generally allow the owner to avoid double taxation. That said, I don't see how you'd hope to take any sort of tax advantage by incorporating yourself. Tell me if I'm missing something.

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

Tax discussions end up all over the place and seem to most frequently end up in the New, Views, Gossip forum.

The main advantage to incorporation would seem to be making distributions from an S Corporation and avoiding the payroll taxes on those distributions.

Income from a single-member limited liability company (one owner) is typically reported as if the owner earned the income directly. A single-member LLC is commonly referred to as a disregarded entity.

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

You can't "declare" yourself a corporation. You actually have to incorporate. In any event, you should consult a tax professional.

But, for what it's worth, I'm in another line of work where some people do incorporate. My attorney tells me that I'd have to be making about $200,000 per year and plan to do so consistently, before it would be tax advantageous.

Re: Declaring Yourself a Corporation for Tax Purposes
 

As everyone else has mentioned, you should talk to an accountant, but one of the big advantages of incorporating is that you can buy things with pre-tax dollars from your corporation that you would otherwise buy with post-tax dollars. Unfortunately you're limited to doing this with reasonable business expenses.... in the case of a professional poker player this would definitely be stuff like books, computers, relevant software, etc... if you stretch maybe you can write off part of your rent/mortgage as a home office expense, etc... if you travel to play live tournaments then I'm guessing you could treat airfare and hotels this way.... so, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me as if it might be worth talking to an accountant about.