Business of Architecture Podcast · Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

Choosing an Entity Structure and Paying Less Taxes | EP645

July 28, 2025·40 min·3 clips

Tal explains why S-Corporations break for architectural firms the moment you add a second partner.

Tax planning starts throughout the year. The host starts with a familiar architecture-owner headache: too many tax opinions, not enough clarity, and a United States IRS system that can feel hard to read. Todd Binder brings the business side. Rachel Richards brings the CPA side, tying strategy to preparation, compliance, and the systems that make a tax choice actually usable. The S corporation question stays grounded. Entity structure is not treated like a shortcut. It comes with payroll, bookkeeping, clean statements, and reasonable compensation. Deductible does not mean free. That point lands because the guest slows the owner down before payroll providers, bookkeeping help, and tax preparation fade into the background as overhead. A one-person business still needs infrastructure. For one business with one employee, payroll can run roughly $500 to $1,000 a year before bookkeeping even enters the picture. Bookkeeping depends on what the owner expects. Simple categorization costs less. Billing support and more day-to-day involvement push the monthly fee up. Clean financial statements are the handoff. The guest defines bookkeeping by what it produces, because a tax professional can only work from records that are organized and current. The warning is practical, not scolding. Owners are not expected to learn every piece of financial language while also running projects, clients, and teams. Entity structure has maintenance costs. The useful question is whether the tax savings still hold up after the business takes on the obligations. The close brings it back to practice ownership: owners want to get back to architecture, not become full-time administrators.

As heard by us

A practical tax discussion that treats structure, records, and timing as ongoing business decisions.

Taxes, entity structure, and year-round planning are treated here as ongoing business decisions, not a once-a-year chore. Todd Binder and Rachel Richards take a practical, strategy-first approach to S-corps, reasonable compensation, bookkeeping, payroll, and the difference…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if minimizing your business taxes has started to feel like a moving target.

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