commercialguy
Member
I've been really struggling with this lately. I have an LLC for my narrative production company. I've yet to really make any money with anything on it. Just set it up in hopes I one day would secure a movie deal, but that never happened after years of struggling.
So I'm looking at getting into commercial work. Initially I thought about starting a separate LLC to separate the liability. The thought being, what if I get sued for a wedding video not turning out how someone wanted (I hear they sometimes sue). Or whatever other reason. I figured it would be risky to mix a lower end commercial business with possibly a multimillion dollar narrative/movie business. What if a movie doesn't pull the return I want and suddenly the investors want to own my commercial business to recoup or something. Maybe all this is me just being paranoid.
Then I thought of the benefits of having them in the same LLC. I could take in funds for commercial work I do. And use it to buy equipment and finance a low budget movie from time to time. And the cost of the low budget movie could offset the profit of commercial work and I could write off my movies that way if I keep it all in the same LLC.
Otherwise I'd be taking the money out of the commercial LLC to pay myself. Then putting it into a movie LLC or my movie production LLC directly. I'd still be able to write it off, but only if the movie makes money, I'd be writing off the cost of making it against the profit which could be much longer out, rather than an immediate write off against my commercial profits.
What are you guys currently doing? Keeping them in the same one or seperate ones?
So I'm looking at getting into commercial work. Initially I thought about starting a separate LLC to separate the liability. The thought being, what if I get sued for a wedding video not turning out how someone wanted (I hear they sometimes sue). Or whatever other reason. I figured it would be risky to mix a lower end commercial business with possibly a multimillion dollar narrative/movie business. What if a movie doesn't pull the return I want and suddenly the investors want to own my commercial business to recoup or something. Maybe all this is me just being paranoid.
Then I thought of the benefits of having them in the same LLC. I could take in funds for commercial work I do. And use it to buy equipment and finance a low budget movie from time to time. And the cost of the low budget movie could offset the profit of commercial work and I could write off my movies that way if I keep it all in the same LLC.
Otherwise I'd be taking the money out of the commercial LLC to pay myself. Then putting it into a movie LLC or my movie production LLC directly. I'd still be able to write it off, but only if the movie makes money, I'd be writing off the cost of making it against the profit which could be much longer out, rather than an immediate write off against my commercial profits.
What are you guys currently doing? Keeping them in the same one or seperate ones?