Does the IRS refund a buisness any money if they report a loss for the year?

Public Comments

1. the loss is subtratced form the taxes that you would owe. so, jack up that loss amount of the refund.
2. no thanks for the giggles.
3. Only if you paid in estimated taxes greater than your final tax liability. If you have not paid in excess tax, you won't get any refund simply because your business lost money. If your business is one that passes directly to your personal tax return, such as a single or multi member LLC, Sole Proprietorship, Partnership or S-Corp, the losses will offset your other income and will reduce your total tax liability.
4. Let's look at it this way. Go to the tax tables. Do you see any columns that have negative numbers? Of course not. The best scenario is that you might not owe any money but not that you would get money back for a tax or a business loss.
5. I want to add one more thing to Bostonian's answer- the only competent one so far. if you have negative taxable income after netting everything, a carryback or carryforward may apply. These provisions let you retroactively/prospectively apply some/all of the loss against taxable income in past/future years.
6. If you have a net operating loss, you can use it to reduce taxes paid in a prior or subsequent year with a carry back or carry forward
7. This depends. If you have a business as self employed, and you also have a job, you usually can deduct up to $3000 of "lose" against your job income. If you don't have another job, therefore you have a total loss, you will just be able to generate a "loss carry forward". This means that if you make money next year, you'll be able subtract out of your income the loss from prior years. There are limits to all of this. I use Turbo tax for both my personal and business and it does all the work for you, so you don't have to be an expert.
8. If your business has a net loss but you have other income also, the business loss will decrease the tax you'd pay on the other income. But no, if you just have a net loss, the government isn't going to pay you for that. The only way you'd get a refund is if you made estimated payments throiugh the year - then if you ended the year with a net loss so owed no tax, you'd get your estimated payments back.