Welcome, friend, to Elyria’s Bureaucracy Hacks! 

Below, you’ll find a number of guides I’ve created from personal experience, online research, and a rigorous pursuit of publicly available information. In some cases, I’ve described strategies that only apply in certain states. (I currently live in Ohio, so if you do too, you’re in luck! All the info below is tailored to our state.) In other cases, the strategies I outline work in the entire U.S.

These guides are NOT meant to be comprehensive OR complete. They’re guides - and I’m constantly updating them, adding information as I learn it or as it changes. Like any good guide, they’re designed to be helpful, but this information does NOT constitute tax advice, and DOES require you to use good judgement in how, whether, and where to apply it.

Every business, tax situation, and small non-profit works slightly differently. I’ve found that with a discerning eye and a creative approach, you’re likely to find all the information you need online and at no cost. That said, sometimes it helps to talk to someone, especially someone with professional experience in these fields. I fully support relying on professionals as much as possible, and your wallet allows. In addition, if you have a question, a suggested update, a clarification, or really anything you’d like to talk about on the below topics — this is my pet project, so I’ll happily entertain your question and respond if I can.

A recommendation to get on Medicaid if you can: my partner and I deal with a number of health issues. We qualified for Medicaid in 2018. Neither of us ever had health care that actually felt supportive, until now. I spent several years actively avoiding Medicaid, purposefully not taking deductions on the schedule C that I could have, because I was under the mistaken impression that Medicaid was not as good or comprehensive as subsidized health care for small business owners. I was wrong.

Being on Medicaid has saved me hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, and infinite headaches. How does Medicaid relate to your small business, you ask?

The short version: business expenses recorded on the Schedule C - if they bring your business income below $0 in a year - also reduce your AGI (adjusted gross income). Eligibility for Medicaid is based on AGI (technically, MAGI, but for most people AGI = MAGI).

So, say you’re a single person with a part-time job and a part-time small business. You earn $20,000 from your part-time job this year. You earn $5,000 from your business, but spend or deduct $13,000 in qualified business expenses this year (for a loss of $8,000). When you file taxes at the end of the year, your total income is $20,000 (job income) MINUS $8,000 (schedule C loss) or just $12,000… and, congratulations, you qualify for Medicaid - in most states, anyway!

NOTE: when applying for Medicaid, every professional I’ve spoken with says this: CALL THEM ON THE PHONE. The online systems are byzantine and untrustworthy. If you’ve applied online and been denied, call in anyway. You could very well qualify, despite what the online system said. Better yet, just call to begin with!

So far I've incorporated six single-member LLCs. I spent a lot of time researching the available organizational structures before starting my first LLC, Home Harmonizers.

Here's what I learned, and how you can use it.

The spreadsheet linked here is based on a spreadsheet I created several years ago for myself. I use a similar spreadsheet to record business expenses for each of my businesses each year, and to easily organize information to file taxes. I recommend getting familiar with the Schedule C instructions online as well, to make sure you’re taking full advantage of all the deductions you qualify for as a small business owner!

So far, I've helped five small non-profit organizations incorporate and successfully gain tax exemption from the IRS, and keep that status for 1-5 years. I'm available to help organizations work through more of this process for a low hourly rate through Home Harmonizers, my small business, but if you prefer to figure it out for yourself, this Bureaucracy Hack is where to start.