As far as federal taxes go, the IRS considers your single member LLC to be a disregarded entity. Therefore all business income and expenses is reported on SCH C as a physical part of your personal 1040 tax return. The IRS expects you to report the business stuff on SCH C in the first tax year that you are officially *OPEN FOR BUSINESS*. It does not matter if you have any income or expenses really. If you were "open for business" in 2019 then you will include your business income/expenses (even if all zeros) on SCH C as a physical part of your personal 1040 tax return when you file it. If you were not open for business for at least one day in 2019, then you will not include SCH C or report report anything on your tax return concerning the business to the IRS.
Now for the state of Arizona, from what I see the sames rules will hold true for your state return too. But you need to understand one thing.
Your registration with the state as a business has *NOTHING* to do with *ANY* tax return. Just like registering your car has *NOTHING* to do with your driver's license renewal requirements. So don't get confused here. While most states require a single member LLC to "renew" every year with what is called an "annual filing requirement" (not tax reporting requirement), Arizona is not one of those states. So with Arizona your LLC is considered active by the state until you take physical action and file paperwork with the state to change the status to inactive.
Generally when you start a single member LLC it is usually registered as "inactive". What this does is reserve the business name for you so that no one else cah take it. It also allows you to do things like open a business bank account in the business name, obtain credit/debit cards in the business name and obtain and EIN from the IRS for the business. It also allows you to use credit to purchase any necessary equipment that may be needed by the business before it can "actually" be open for business. For example, a restaurant can't open until they have hired and trained employees, purchased stoves, ovens, tables, chairs, china, silverware and the such. These items are absolutely necessary before the restaurant can possibly serve their first customer. Those expenses incurred prior to the business officially being open for business, are referred to as "start up costs". The nice thing about startup costs is that it flat out does not matter in what year they are purchased. But they can't be claimed until the first tax year the business is actually "open for business". This really helps reduce the tax burden on a new business (if not totally eliminate it) in it's first year of operation.
Wow! I've ran on for quite a bit here. So I guess I stop now.
What you are referring to for that "quarterly" tax thing is not "filing" a return of any type with any taxing authority. A business is required to pay business taxes to the IRS (and the state too in your case) each quarter the business has taxable earnings. Since you've not been open for business in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd quarters of 2019, you have no quarterly tax payment due to any taxing authority at all. So at this point, don't sweat it. 🙂
