Comment by overfeed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by overfeed | Hacker News Reader

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>>The EIN is just to avoid putting your personal SSN on invoices.

> In order to do that, your LLC has to elect to be taxed as an S-corp, which requires it to file its own return

I think your interpretation is wrong and you have stripped the context on your IRS advice you quoted, changing the meaning. At the start of the paragraph containing your quote, it says "For federal income tax purposes, a single-member LLC classified as a disregarded entity generally must use the owner's social security number (SSN) or employer identification number (EIN) for all information returns and reporting related to income tax."

IMO, this has has to do with how one files their income and/or report to the IRS - as a pass-through entity, the IRS expects the human behind the single-member to file the income under their own own SSN even as after are distributing invoices with their LLC's EIN. IANA(Tax)L

No, you're misreading it. Information returns in most cases is the W-2 you send out to your employees and file a copy with the IRS for their information. I've always said that, for employment tax purposes, you use the LLC's EIN.

The entire quote on the IRS's webpage: "For example, if a disregarded entity LLC that is owned by an individual is required to provide a Form W-9, Request for Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) and Certification, the W-9 should provide the owner’s SSN or EIN, not the LLC’s EIN.

For certain Employment Tax and Excise Tax requirements discussed below, the EIN of the LLC must be used. An LLC will need an EIN if it has any employees or if it will be required to file any of the excise tax forms listed below."

The original statement was SSN hiding for invoices, that's directly covered in the W-9 example. You can (have to) hide your SSN on W-2s, but not the W-9s you give to customers.

(As far as I understand:)

1) Unless you only take card payments through e.g. Stripe, at which point your SSN information goes to Stripe not the client.

2) You can get a personal EIN, and then you don't need to share your SSN with your clients.

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