My father and I have started a partnership. How we supposed to file quarterly earnings as self-employed? Include other job income as earnings? What about our spouses?

[Warfire97]

My father and I started an LLC (partnership) around 2/1/21 and were curious how we file our taxes properly? We found we had to file quarterly earnings. We have a few questions:

1. What exactly do we file and with who?
2. Do we include other job income (I work two jobs).
3. Do we include spouse income (unrelated to the LLC)?
4. If we did not take any income from the company and left the earnings in the company, do we report $0 earnings as self-employed?
5. I personally file with TurboTax each year, how does this affect my normal tax filing?

[JeffreyR77]

Your LLC will be required to file a Form 1065 return by March 15th 2022. 

You should have already applied for an EIN for your LLC from the IRS. 

As a partnership, neither of you should be drawing payroll and therefore do not have a requirement for reporting of quarterly earnings for income tax purposes.  You want to stay aware of what your earnings are as you may want to make quarterly estimated tax deposits for your individual income tax liabilities if you are making profits in your partnership.

At year end you will divide any profit/loss and include that with your personal income on your individual tax returns. 

Whether you actually withdraw funds from the business or not at year end you and your father will receive a Form K1 when the Form 1065 if completed the reports your share of the income and expenses for the year to be reported on your personal individual tax returns. 

Your business Form 1065 return can be prepared using TurboTax Business. 

If you maintain your business accounting records in Quickbooks Online, you can import your bookkeeping information into TurboTax Business to prepare your tax return at year end.

Apply for an EIN

[Opus 17]

An LLC formed with anyone other than a spouse must file a form 1065 partnership return.  This is due March 15 of the tax season, not April 15, and the late fee is $195 per month per member.  This can only be done using Turbotax Business, which is only available for the PC (no Mac or online version), and is different than "Home & Business."

As part of filing the 1065, you will create a K-1 statement for each partner that reports the partners' share of income and expenses, the K-1 is included on your personal tax return along with any other income, deductions and dependents.  If you are married filing jointly, your personal tax return will include all the income and deductions for you and your spouse, including your K-1. 

The LLC needs a federal tax number called an EIN, you can get this for free from the IRS.  Every time the membership of the LLC changes, it needs a new EIN.  

You do not "draw payroll".  As partners of the LLC you are not employees and do not have payroll or W-2s.  If you take money from the LLC's funds, that has nothing to do with your overall profit and loss at the end of the year, although your profit will certainly influence the amount of money, if any, that you can transfer from the LLC to spend for yourselves.

You do not file quarterly earnings for the LLC.  The individual members may have to make quarterly estimated tax payments on their personal tax returns based on the amount of profit they expect to get from the business (the profit they expect will be reported on the K-1).  Turbotax is not designed to calculate this for you.  You can use a calculator at the IRS web site.  Or, if you use finance software to record the business income and expenses (like Quickbooks or Mint or something else) that software may be able to help with estimated tax payments for the partners.

The profit of the LLC is determined solely by it's income and expenses.  If you leave the profit in the LLC's bank account, it's still taxable profit to the members. 

An LLC has the option of being taxed as an S-corporation.  This has many implications and complications and should not be done without professional advice. 

Start here,

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/limited-liability-company-llc

You may want to buy a tax guide like Lasser's or similar, if you don't want professional assistance setting up the LLC's books.