The Franchise Tax Board, California’s income tax agency, today issued a legal opinion on how to calculate the Limited Liability Company (LLC) fee for a real estate company selling real property. This is an important issue because if Cost of Goods Sold is included the LLC fee would be significantly higher.
California charges LLCs two fees. The first is an $800 a year tax that any California LLC (or a foreign LLC doing business in California) must pay. The second is a gross receipts fee. Gross receipts is calculated by taking gross income and adding back cost of goods sold. So for an LLC selling real estate is COGS added back to determine the basis for the fee?
The FTB ruled that it should be added back. The FTB looked at the history of the law, and whether COGS (which must be included in the calculation of the LLC fee) includes real property or not.
Accordingly, the term “cost of goods sold” as used by RTC section 17942, subdivision (b)(1)(A), includes real property held for sale to customers in the ordinary course of a trade or business. Therefore, LLCs that are dealers in real property must add the cost of goods sold (based on real property) back to gross income in calculating the LLC fee.
Do note that this is just the FTB’s opinion; courts could rule otherwise. However, a plain reading of the law would seem that the FTB is likely interpreting this correctly. This means an LLC may not always be the best choice of legal entity in California. (Do note that an LLC that elects a corporate form of taxation in California is treated as a corporation—either an S-Corp or a C-Corp—for tax purposes.)