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Legal entity vs tax classification

An LLC is a state-law company. S-corp is a federal tax election. Mixing those two fields is how most 'entity quizzes' go wrong.

State law creates the legal person: sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, corporation, nonprofit corporation, trust. That is who can own property, sign a contract, and appear on a Secretary of State record.

Federal tax classification is a separate choice (or default) for how that person reports income: disregarded, partnership, S corporation, C corporation, tax-exempt, grantor trust, and so on.

A single-member LLC is usually disregarded for federal income tax. The same LLC can later elect S-corp treatment. The LLC does not become a different state entity when that election is accepted.

Creytix Tax always stores both fields. Pages that describe S-corp are labeled tax-classification-only so they are never listed as a formation type next to LLC and C-corp.

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