I know many of you have small businesses for your trapping . lure sales or many other things you do or sell.

I am looking at doing some work with a farm that will be more than I have done in the past not a ton. I will need to buy some equipment to update what I have

do you form an LLC or just have them issue a 1099 income statement.

if you don't form an LLC how do you document and file taxes showing you got paid X for the job and what your equipment and consumables costs were.

Just a sole proprietership- which means the business doesn't exist as a separate entity. You are all there is and it's your income. Income and expense gets reported on schedule c at tax time. Schedule c calculates profit which flows to your 1040. You also need to file schedule SE to pay your self employment tax. Self.employment tax should be filed and paid quarterly or youll owe penalties for not following the rules.

After decades in business it's all easy now. I was completely lost at tax time when I first started out.

Maintenence guy summarized very well. The LLC is likely not going to offer any real advantage or protection if your working out of your home.

thanks

do I only need to file income report for the quarters I have income, day I only work on a project in Q1 and Q4 do I need to file Q2&3?

You don't file income reports, you may want to pay estimated quarterly tax payments. If it amounts to a considerable sum, theoretically you will have penalties if you end up owing a bunch of tax at the end of the year. I think it may be a judgement call by the IRS. They may just tell you need to start paying quarterly if this is a pattern.

A little clarification. A schedule C is the form businesses use to report their business income. Legally you have to file one for each business activity. I don't, as it all ends the same anyway and just more paperwork.

If it's farm income you will want to file a schedule F.

An ol' Okie once told me if ya take in four-O you write down two-O; Pay Uncle Sam- Zer-O!

You can form a single person LLC, but as stated above it is not needed. A schedule C would be all you would need and does not cost anything to setup or establish. They have good forms to help you keep track of business miles etc.
The couple of individuals I worked with that formed LLCs even when single, did so mostly for insurance coverage concerns and issues. I don't know if that is an issue for you or not.
Bryce

The advantage of an llc is that you are an employee not the owner. If the llc gets sued, you aren't sued. Unless you do something illegal, the llc can lose everything but you don't. I have one business in an llc because I feel it's the kind of business that might get sued someday. I have two others that are just sole proprietorship becauseni can't think of any way they could ever cause any loss to anyone.

If i had a construction company it would be an llc because contractors get sued a lot. Flowernshop: no. How can a bunch of flowers cause someone a loss. Risk adverse attorneys will say always do an llc. I can sleep at night with a little risk.

Quarterly filing of self employment tax doesn't get calculated on a tax form. You just estimate the tax owed and pay that. But they want it to be paid in equal payments so you have to guess right. I got a scolding letter because i had an unexpected large sale one quarter and paid more that quarter. Payments weren't equal. So in january you already need to know how much money youre going to have made in December. Makes sense when you just accept that it's the government.

I don't worry about that stuff any more. If your in business scolding letters are going to come. They make the rules impossible and scold when you can't follow them.

Best answer I can offer is to define what it is you're looking to do. Determine the amount of risk you're willing to accept for yourself and family and then discuss the business options with a qualified tax attorney and CPA.