Thank you for the amazingly fast reply.
I've gone through the Turbotax Business program now and I'm still wondering about this.
Possibly I should have been a little more complete with my info, however, to help show how new I am to this. Last year I created a formal LLC with my sister and her husband with a CPA (with the tax ID, paid liability insurance, etc) when I retired last year. We bought a wreck of a house in 2021 and after months of sweat equity, are waiting to pass papers on the sale in about a week, which will have a profit. I thought the CPA we used charged quite a bit to set up the LLC, however, and wondered just how complicated a tax return could be for an LLC that had no income in 2021.
I've always been fine doing my own personal taxes even though they have sometimes been involved, but this is my first business venture.
Since the business had no income last year, I can't see how I can deduct anything for the business, especially since the improvement expenses will be taken into account with the property sale this year. Even the costs to start the LLC, as in the CPA costs and filing fees I don't imagine can be deducted if there is no income to reduce. Of course I could be entirely missing something. Am I wrong to think that if there is no income then we can't take a deduction? Or is it that we need to file so that there is a record somewhere even though there was no income to tax?
I'll certainly have to do a personal tax return because I retired mid year and have personal income from my former job, but my giant guess was that with no income from the LLC, it isn't likely to affect those taxes. Or am I supposed to take my fraction of the operating costs like the LLC filing fees to reduce income from my former job? (I don't expect that to be true.)
My fear is that this is too complicated to do by myself this first year, of course.
Am I missing something really important here?
Thanks Again.
