Limited Liability Company - Advantages

Advantages

• Choice of tax regime. An LLC can elect to be taxed as a sole proprietor, partnership, S corporation or C corporation (as long as they would otherwise qualify for such tax treatment), providing for a great deal of flexibility.
• A limited liability company with multiple members that elects to be taxed as partnership may specially allocate the members' distributive share of income, gain, loss, deduction, or credit via the company operating agreement on a basis other than the ownership percentage of each member so long as the rules contained in Treasury Regulation (26 CFR) 1.704-1 are met. S corporations may not specially allocate profits, losses and other tax items under US tax law.
• Limited liability, meaning that the owners of the LLC, called “members”, are protected from some or all liability for acts and debts of the LLC depending on state shield laws.
• Much less administrative paperwork and record keeping than a corporation.
• Pass-through taxation (i.e., no double taxation), unless the LLC elects to be taxed as a C corporation.
• Using default tax classification, profits are taxed personally at the member level, not at the LLC level.
• LLCs in most states are treated as entities separate from their members, whereas in other jurisdictions case law has developed deciding LLCs are not considered to have separate legal standing from their members (see recent D.C. decisions).
• LLCs in some states can be set up with just one natural person involved.
• Less risk to be "stolen" by fire-sale acquisitions (more protection against "hungry" investors).
• For real estate companies, each separate property can be owned by its own, individual LLC, thereby shielding not only the owners, but their other properties from cross-liability.