Short answers
Do I need a balance sheet?
For the IRS, it depends on the entity. An S corporation fills in its balance sheet, Schedule L, unless total receipts and total assets were both under $250,000; a partnership skips it only if it meets four conditions, including receipts under $250,000 and assets under $1 million; a sole proprietor's Schedule C reports profit or loss and has no balance sheet. For running the business, Excite Tax's answer is yes for almost everyone: it is the only report that shows what the business owns and owes. The entity-by-entity table is below.
What is a balance sheet?
A list of what the business owns (assets), what it owes (liabilities) and what is left for the owners (equity), all on one date. The SEC sums it up in one line: assets equal liabilities plus shareholders' equity, and the two sides have to balance, which is where the name comes from. The basics, with a worked example, are below.
Does a partnership or multi-member LLC need one?
Usually, yes. A partnership skips the balance sheet only if receipts were under $250,000, assets under $1 million, every Schedule K-1 went out on time and no Schedule M-3 is required. Miss any one condition and the balance sheet is required. More below.
Does a sole proprietor or single-member LLC need one?
Not for the IRS. Schedule C reports income or loss, and a single-member LLC owned by one person is generally reported on Schedule C too. The only balance-sheet figure the form asks for is inventory at the beginning and end of the year. A lender will still want one; see below.
Why keep a balance sheet if the IRS does not ask for one?
Because lenders ask, and because it catches mistakes. The SBA tells an established business to include balance sheets for the last three to five years in the business plan behind a funding request. And a bank balance on the balance sheet that does not match the bank statement is the earliest sign the books are wrong. More below.
A balance sheet is a snapshot. The SEC's guide says it shows assets, liabilities and shareholders' equity at the end of the reporting period, not the flows into and out of the accounts during it. That is the difference from a profit and loss statement, which covers a stretch of time; see the profit and loss statement.
- Assets: what the business owns. Cash, money customers owe, inventory, equipment and vehicles.
- Liabilities: what it owes. Credit card balances, loans, unpaid bills, and payroll taxes withheld but not yet paid over.
- Equity: what is left for the owners. Money put in, plus profits kept, minus losses and draws.
The three always tie: assets equal liabilities plus equity. Each side is also split by time. Current assets are expected to turn into cash within a year, and current liabilities to be paid off within the year; everything else is long-term.
A worked example
A made-up Utah landscaping LLC at the end of its year, with one truck, one loan and one credit card. The lines follow the order the IRS uses on its own balance sheet.
Illustrative figures for a made-up Utah business, in the order of Schedule L of Form 1120-S
| Line | Amount |
|---|
| Cash in the business account (a current asset) | $18,000 |
| Customers' unpaid invoices (a current asset) | $6,500 |
| Truck at cost of $42,000, less accumulated depreciation of $8,400 | $33,600 |
| Total assets (one side of the equation) | $58,100 |
| Credit card balance (a current liability) | $2,100 |
| Truck loan, principal due in the next 12 months (a current liability) | $6,000 |
| Truck loan, the rest (long-term, due more than a year away) | $23,000 |
| Total liabilities (what is owed) | $31,100 |
| Owners' equity (assets minus liabilities) | $27,000 |
| Total liabilities and equity (equal to total assets) | $58,100 |
Read it the way a lender does. The business has current assets of $24,500 against $8,100 due within the year, the card balance plus the next year of truck-loan principal, so it can pay its short-term bills. The truck is mostly the bank's: $29,000 is owed on a truck carried at $33,600 after depreciation. And the owners' $27,000 is what is left after the debts, the figure that grows with kept profit and shrinks with draws.
The federal return decides whether the balance sheet is filed. Here is the rule on each common small-business return:
Where a balance sheet is required, it is not a report you design yourself. It is Schedule L, and the instructions say the balance sheets should agree with the corporation's books and records; a partnership whose Schedule L differs from its books must attach a statement explaining any differences. A balance sheet typed onto the return from memory is exactly what those instructions rule out.
Schedule B, question 11 of Form 1120-S asks whether total receipts for the year were under $250,000 and whether total assets at year end were under $250,000. Both answers must be yes to skip the balance sheet. If either is no, Schedules L and M-1 are required.
Total receipts is the trap. The instructions define it as gross receipts or sales, plus all other income on page 1, lines 4 and 5, plus the rental, interest, dividend, royalty and gain amounts reported on Schedule K and Form 8825. Page 1, line 4 is the net gain from Form 4797, which is where a sale of business equipment lands.
An example with round numbers. A Utah S corporation bills $232,000 for its services and reports a $26,000 Form 4797 gain on selling an old van. Sales alone are under the line, but total receipts are $258,000, so the $250,000 test fails and Schedule L is required, even though the business never billed $250,000.
Two more lines keep the balance sheet in play for small S corporations. Every S corporation enters its total assets at the end of the year, as the books show them, in item F on page 1, so the number has to exist whether or not Schedule L is filed. And the exemption covers Schedules L and M-1 only: Schedule M-2, which tracks the accumulated adjustments account, is not on that list.
Schedule L is also where loans to shareholders and loans from shareholders show up, and those balances matter for a shareholder's basis. If you put money in or took money out during the year, read S corporation shareholder basis before the return is prepared.
A partnership gets a looser asset limit but two extra conditions. Schedule B, question 4 of Form 1065 excuses the balance sheet only when all four of these hold:
- Total receipts for the year were under $250,000.
- Total assets at the end of the year were under $1 million.
- Every Schedule K-1 was filed with the return and furnished to the partners by the due date, including extensions.
- The partnership is not filing, and is not required to file, Schedule M-3.
A partnership that answers yes also skips Schedules L, M-1 and M-2, item F on page 1, and item L on each Schedule K-1. Excite Tax's view: keep the balance sheet anyway. One late K-1 makes the balance sheet required for that year, and a partnership that never kept one has to rebuild its opening balances first.
Schedule C reports income or loss from a business you operated as a sole proprietor, and a single-member LLC owned by an individual that has not elected corporate treatment is generally reported on Schedule C, E or F. The form has no balance sheet. The one balance-sheet figure it asks for is inventory at the beginning and end of the year, in Part III, Cost of Goods Sold.
That does not make a balance sheet useless. The IRS asks that the books show gross income, deductions and credits, and they only do that correctly when the bank, card and loan balances under them are right. Freelancers and one-person businesses have their own checklist in bookkeeping for freelancers.
- A loan or a line of credit. The SBA's business-plan guidance tells an established business to include income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements for the last three to five years with a funding request.
- Catching errors early. If the cash on the balance sheet does not match the bank statement, something is missing or doubled, and a bank reconciliation finds it.
- Owner money in and out. Equity shows what you put in and took out, which matters for an S corporation's shareholder basis and a partner's capital account.
- Debt you stopped watching. A loan balance that never goes down means the whole payment, principal included, is being booked as an expense.
- Selling the business or bringing in a partner. The buyer or the new partner starts from what the business owns and owes.
If the books are in accounting software, the balance sheet is a standard report; the work is making it right, not making it. Excite Tax's order of work at each month end:
- Reconcile every bank, card and loan account to its statement, so cash and debt match the outside world.
- Check that customers' unpaid invoices and your unpaid bills are real, not duplicates or old items nobody will pay.
- Carry equipment and vehicles at cost, with the depreciation recorded against them.
- Split each loan payment into interest, an expense, and principal, a reduction of the loan.
- Read equity last: contributions and draws should match what actually moved between you and the business.
On the cash method, the books may carry no customer receivables or unpaid bills at all; cash vs. accrual accounting explains the difference. The accounts that feed the balance sheet are set up in the chart of accounts, and the monthly routine is the month-end close checklist.
The Utah business returns set no balance-sheet test of their own; they carry the federal pages instead. An S corporation filing TC-20S attaches only pages 1 through 5 of its federal S corporation return, and Schedule L is on page 4 of Form 1120-S, so a Utah S corporation over the limit sends its balance sheet to the state too.
A C corporation filing TC-20 attaches pages 1 through 6 of its federal corporation return, and Schedule L is on page 6 of Form 1120. A partnership filing TC-65 does not send its federal return at all, but the instructions say to keep it in your files, because the Tax Commission may ask for it later to verify entries on the Utah return.
Hand the books over when keeping them costs more hours than the business can spare, or when they stop agreeing with the bank.
Excite Tax keeps these books; the return they feed is reviewed and signed by a licensed CPA at TBD CPA LLC.
- IRS, Form 1120-S (2025), U.S. Income Tax Return for an S Corporation · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, About Schedule C (Form 1040), Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship) · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, Form 1065 (2025), U.S. Return of Partnership Income, Schedule B, question 4 · retrieved September 2026
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Beginners' Guide to Financial Statements (page updated February 6, 2017) · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, Instructions for Form 1120-S (2025) · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, Single member limited liability companies · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, Schedule C (Form 1040) (2025), Profit or Loss From Business, Part III · retrieved September 2026
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Write your business plan (Financial projections) · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, Form 1120 (2025), U.S. Corporation Income Tax Return · retrieved September 2026
- IRS, Instructions for Form 1065 (2025) · retrieved September 2026
- IRS Publication 583 (12/2024), Starting a Business and Keeping Records · retrieved September 2026
- Utah State Tax Commission, TC-20S Utah S Corporation Forms and Instructions (2025), What to Attach and What to Keep · retrieved September 2026
- Utah State Tax Commission, TC-20 Utah Corporation Franchise and Income Tax Forms and Instructions (2025), What to Attach and What to Keep · retrieved September 2026
- Utah State Tax Commission, TC-65 Utah Partnership Forms and Instructions (2025), What to Attach and What to Keep · retrieved September 2026
Ranked and explained on the sources page.