While we always say when you are an entrepreneur there is no difference between your business life and your personal life, when you start your business you actually have to create some separation between the two. There are important financial, legal and tax reasons to separate your business and personal finances.

“All that is needed to keep your business affairs untangled from your personal money matters is to have a separate business account and a separate business credit card.” 

• Financial. It’s difficult to know how well your business is doing if you can’t easily eyeball a bank balance devoted to your company. You may run into cash flow problems using a single account for business and personal expenses. Also, having a separate credit card for the company helps to build business credit scores.
• Legal. If your business is a corporation or a limited liability company, you can lose the personal liability protection you sought by setting up such an entity by co-mingling your finances. The reason: If you don’t respect the separate legal status of the entity, creditors may not have to and can go after your personal assets to satisfy their claims. There’s a legal doctrine called “piercing the corporate veil,” which means courts can ignore your entity’s status for purposes of your personal liability for any claims against the business if you haven’t observed the formalities of a separate business entity.
• Tax. For federal income tax purpose, the law requires you to keep good books and records. This can only be done if you have a business bank account into which you deposit income and from which you pay expenses. A rookie mistake is thinking you can remember what expense is for business, such as a meal, when it comes time to prepare your tax return; you can’t — and it can cost you tax deductions!

All that is needed to keep your business affairs untangled from your personal money matters is to have a separate business bank account and a separate business credit card. If you choose to use PayPal, also set up an account for your business. Keeping your business and personal life separate is extremely helpful. It’s easy to do. It merely requires a little housekeeping to set things up properly, and then to follow through.