Banking Blunders

June Walker recently posted "You need only one checking account. Do not open a separate checking account for your business."

On this matter she and I respectfully disagree, and it seems most of the tax bloggers disagree with her as well.

Joe Kristan says it well in his usual no-nonsense way:

You will save yourself a lot of time at tax time, and a lot of grief in an IRS exam, if personal is personal, business is business, and that's that. Run your business like a business.

The Tax Lawyer provides some more good reasons for setting up a separate account. The Wandering Tax Pro wrote a good post arguing the case for a separate account.

I was disappointed with June's response, which was inflammatory and, in my humble opinion, uncalled for. As Robert Flach put it:

Just because someone respectfully disagrees with you on a subject does not make them a fool, or stupid, or uninformed.

The thing that bugged me most in her response was the accusation that Robert was being sexist when he referred to "One-man LLCs." To Robert's credit, he responded with an apology for not being perfectly PC, and indicated his efforts to use "he/she" in his writing.

Being female, I'm obviously aware of and sensitive to gender issues. I have tremendous admiration and gratitude for the generations of women that have come before and paved the way for younger gals like me. Because of this, I get really annoyed when people start looking for any excuse to accuse someone of being sexist. To me, June's comment was out of left field, and had no real basis in fact. If we always made sure to use the exact PC wording in everything we said, we'd never manage effective communication.

So in summary, I believe strongly in having a separate checking account for business, and even more strongly in keeping communication respectful and productive.