Wild Card Limit for Accounts Receivable on Sole Proprietorship

[easymoney]

Hi everyone,

Filing a joint chapter 7 BK with spouse. Have a sole proprietorship with accounts receivable over wild card limit of $10,825. Amount of accounts receivables is payable either to me individually or the DBA business name, not to my spouse. She is not an employee of the business. The business is not incorporated.

Can I combine the wild card limits of $21,650 for the two of us towards the accounts receivable or am I out of luck and only able to take the $10,825 wild card exemption? The business is in my name only, however the schedule C for the business is included with our joint 1040 tax return.

Easymoney

[justbroke]

I usually don't help people with exemptions because this is serious business and you can lose property. If you are married and file jointly, it appears that California System 2 -- the exemption system you are probably using -- does not allow joint filing spouses to double the wildcard exemption. Since you do have a business with some inventory, I would nope that you are filing with an attorney and not pro se! Remember, you probably have other assets such as home furnishings and/or equity in cars, or even tools of the trade. Be very careful with your exemptions.

California is a community property anyhow, so you are using community funds and commingling the funds, so the business belongs to both of you (unless you have some sort of ante/pre nuptial agreement in place).

[keepsmiling]

When you own a business and need to exempt accts receivable, timing is of the utmost importance.
Someone once posted exactly how they timed it... maybe we can dig it up.
So, you don't want to go with an atty who is inflexible on filing timing. Some only file the 1st and 15th.