Collective is a comprehensive online platform to help self employed entrepreneurs (aka solopreneurs) start, run, and build their business.
Freelancing is great, with all of that freedom and flexibility. What isn’t so great is figuring out health insurance, retirement planning, and worst of all- taxes.
Collective aims to help you set up your business, manage your back-office, and plan for taxes, so that you can focus on what you love doing.
Business formation - your grand opening! 🎉
For freelancers, the best way to go is a sleek, light, and easy LLC, or Limited Liability Company. No stocks, no complicated corporate documents, no corporate taxes. The downside, LLCs are still taxed like Sole Proprietors… (This means Self Employment tax for Social Security and Medicare)
The key benefit of an LLC is the ability to elect S Corp taxation. S Corps are a hybrid of the LLC and Corporation.
Here's a quick list of things to know:
No Corporate Income Tax!
No Self Employment Tax on profits!
S Corps are a “Pass-through Entity”
Only 100 U.S. citizen shareholders are allowed (But as a Soloprenuer, this doesn’t matter)
You can read more about S Corps vs LLCs for freelancers.
Bookkeeping & Tax - your back office!
Once you organize as an S Corp, there is a lot of back office work to do. Collective makes that simple!
Access to Bookkeeping Advice
The best way to be on top of your finances is to make sure your books are great. Our Accounting Advisors are here to support you and available year-round to:
Support setting up and managing QuickBooks and Gusto
Coach you to choose and sync bank and credit accounts for your income and expenses
Advice on QuickBooks, for Entry Categorization, Account reconciliation, as well as Generating Profit & Loss and Balance Sheets
There's more to what's included with Collective:
QuickBooks Online Essentials (value of $480 per year), that will help you track and organize your expenses, maximizing your tax deductions.
Gusto Payroll (value of $540 per year) which is a cloud-based payroll, benefits, and human resource management software for businesses based in the US.
Tax Planning & Advice
All of our Tax Advisors are Enrolled Agents (and/or CPAs) who are specialized to help build a plan for your business!
On Collective, your Tax Advisors can help you in the following ways:
Help you determine your salary level for best tax optimization
Reminders for estimated tax payments
Preparation of tax returns
1120(s) - If elected as S Corp, we will prepare your business return
1040 (Personal Tax Return) - For Sole Proprietors and LLCs, we will prepare Form 1040 for individual income tax returns. Included are: Small business income, rental income, your spouse, and State Returns.
What happens once you join Collective
Once part of the Collective community, we have a 3 part transition process to get you up to speed.
1. Onboarding (~1 day)
We help you gather the name for your LLC and get you started with your Slack channel with your Accounting Advisor, Tax Advisor and Success Manager.
2. S Corp organization (1-2 week + State approval time)
We help you organize your LLC, get your Operating Agreement in place, help you get an EIN, business license and opening business bank account. Once these are complete, we help you make S Corp tax election.
3. Meet & onboard with your Accounting and Tax Advisor (up to 4 weeks)
We'll get you on a video call with your Accounting Advisor to help you setup your tools and get trained to use them, and your Tax Advisor to help you decide on important financial decisions to optimize your taxes.
Pricing
Collective is offering pilot group members $199/m instead of the usual $249/m. As part of our pilot program, we are working on rolling out a ton of new features and would love your input!
The Not-So-Fine Print
Even though we try to be awesome, here are some things we can’t do for $199/mo:
We can’t make your income taxes go away. We can reduce it, but you still have to pay the IRS and maybe the State… depending on where you live.
We can’t make you state annual reporting fees or franchise taxes go away. They still have to be paid.
We can’t help you with an Occupational License or Sales Tax, they vary based on State, County, and City where you do business.
We can’t include any add-ons that you might want from QBO, Gusto, or other services.
Whew, that’s a lot of stuff. We would love to help you streamline this process. We want you to focus on what YOU do best by letting us do what WE do best. Hopefully, we will be working together soon!