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I have an LLC with me as the Owner and sole Member. I have Business Account for the LLC with Wells Fargo.

I received $70k payment from a client in my Wells Fargo Business account. I want to move the money to my personal account in a Credit Union bank. Since I own/operate both accounts, I am thinking of making a Wells Fargo check to myself for the amount of $70k and deposit this check in my Credit Union account.

Is this legal? Will there be tax/IRS involved? I haven't done this before and I'm not sure if there is a problem with writing a large check to yourself.

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    Is the Wells Fargo Business account an company account or individual account? Is the account with Credit Union an individual account or company account? How are to planning to show this transaction? Your company making you a dividend payment or something else?
    – Dheer
    Commented Jun 19, 2017 at 2:47
  • Wells Fargo Business is my company (LLC) account in which I am the owner & sole member. Credit Union account is my personal individual account.
    – user3665823
    Commented Jun 19, 2017 at 3:11
  • Has this 1-LLC elected to be taxed as a corporation on form 8832, and have you accordingly been filing corporation returns on form 1120 et rel? If not, the LLC is disregarded and the income is pass-through to you and taxable when first received in the business account (or any other place you have control of).
    – dave_thompson_085
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 9:45

3 Answers 3

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The LLC is paying you. It would only be fraudulent if you were trying to move the money out of the LLC to avoid a liability. I'm pretty sure the transaction will be taxable income for you personally. Consider consulting with a CPA to ensure that you're doing the proper record keeping and to get advice on the best way to minimize tax burden while achieving your goals.

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Yes, you can do this. I do this for my own single-member LLC, but I usually do it online instead of writing a check.

Your only legal obligation is to pay quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS.

I'm assuming you are not otherwise doing anything shady. For example, that you have funds in your business account to pay any expenses that will be due soon or that you are trying to somehow pull a fast one on someone else...

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    Last paragraph is mostly useless. Do not second-guess OP's intent beyond what is written in the question.
    – Mindwin Remember Monica
    Commented Jun 19, 2017 at 15:06
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    Hi @Mindwin, I didn't mean to suggest any bad intent of the OP, but I believe the last paragraph is an important caveat to the rest of the answer.
    – minou
    Commented Jun 19, 2017 at 18:36
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    @Mindwin The OP has indicated that this is a payment from a business LLC account to a personal account. The OP has also indicated that they want to ensure there are no tax problems. While the advice as listed in this answer does not specifically indicate whether tax complications exist, a warning about it is not off-topic.
    – Grade 'Eh' Bacon
    Commented Jul 19, 2017 at 12:55
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Making a payment of any amount is usually legal, although of course the specific circumstances matter, and I'm not qualified to give legal advice. Just had to throw in that disclaimer not because I think there's a problem here, but because it is impossible to give a definite answer to a legal question in a specific situation on Stack Exchange.

But the government will be involved. There are two parts to that.

First, as part of anti-money-laundering laws, banks have to report all transactions above a certain limit; I believe $10k. When you use a check or similar to pay, that happens pretty much automatically. When making a cash payment, you may have to fill out some forms.

An secondly, Edward Snowden revealed that the government also tapped into banking networks, so pretty much every transaction is recorded, even if it is not reportable.

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