How to Complete and File Form E-234: St. Louis Earnings Tax Return

Form E-234 is the City of St. Louis earnings tax return for businesses, and it reports the 1 percent tax on net profit from any business activity conducted inside city limits.¹ To file it, you start with your federal profit figure, strip out items the city doesn’t allow, allocate the result if you also do business outside the city, multiply by 1 percent, and send the completed form with your federal schedules to the Collector of Revenue by April 15. There is no electronic filing portal for the return itself; submission is by mail, fax, or email.²

Who Files Form E-234

Every person or entity that maintains a business, professional office, warehouse, or inventory in the City of St. Louis, or conducts any business or self-employment there, must file Form E-234. That duty applies whether the business earned a profit or posted a loss. When you complete the return you pick a filing type that matches your structure:

Type E-2 for self-employed individuals, sole proprietors, freelancers, independent contractors, and gig workers.
Type E-3 for partnerships, including LLPs.
Type E-4 for incorporated businesses, including LLCs taxed as corporations.

If you are a W-2 employee and your employer already withholds the city earnings tax, Form E-234 is not your form. W-2 employees reconcile withholding on Form E-1 instead.³ Filing the wrong form delays processing and can prompt a notice from the Collector of Revenue.

Register First with Form E-9

Before you can file E-234, you need an earnings tax account. Form E-9 is the application that opens the account with the Earnings Tax Department, and the Collector of Revenue is supposed to issue it before you begin operating inside the city.⁴ If you have been doing business in St. Louis without registering, submit E-9 right away. The city can assess back taxes and penalties for every year you should have filed.

What’s Taxable and What You Can Deduct

The 1 percent applies to net profit, not gross receipts. You start with revenue and subtract allowable business expenses to get the taxable figure. Several income categories feed in beyond ordinary sales: commissions, management fees, consulting fees, director’s fees, royalties, rent from business activity, and interest earned in connection with the business. Capital gains on business assets are taxable in full, and capital losses on business assets are deductible in full.

Personal items that sometimes share a tax ID are not business income for this purpose. Deferred compensation (401(k), 403(b), and 457 contributions), dividends and interest unrelated to the business, pension and Social Security income, stock options granted after December 19, 2000, gambling and lottery winnings, and unemployment compensation are not taxable on E-234.⁵ Keep those out of the net profit figure.

Expenses You Cannot Deduct

You can deduct ordinary and necessary operating expenses, with specific exceptions. The following are not deductible on E-234:

Federal and state income taxes.
City of St. Louis earnings tax payments.
Charitable and political contributions.
Operating loss carryovers from prior years.
Life insurance premiums, including policies on partners or corporate officers.
Corporate dividends, withdrawals, and other charges to capital or surplus.
Club dues not allowed by the IRS.
Fines and penalties for violating any law.

Business meals and entertainment are 50 percent deductible. Partnerships should remember that guaranteed payments to partners are not deductible; those payments stay in the partnership’s net profit.

Working Through the Form

Download the current fillable PDF from the Collector of Revenue website.¹ The form has several sections. Not every filer uses all of them.

Section A: Net Profit

List gross receipts, subtract allowable expenses, and arrive at net profit or loss. Complete every line even if some entries are zero. Attach your federal return and schedules: Schedule C for sole proprietors and self-employed filers, Form 1065 with schedules for partnerships, and Form 1120 with schedules for corporations.

Section A-1: Business Expense Deductions

Itemize deductions in the space provided or attach a separate list. If your attached Schedule C, 1065, or 1120 already breaks the expenses out, that typically satisfies the requirement, but still list the major categories on the form so an examiner does not have to hunt for them.

Section A-2: Informational Disbursement Report

Complete A-2 whenever you deduct subcontractor payments, independent contractor fees, professional fees, consulting fees, director’s fees, management fees, equipment leasing, entertainment, commissions, bonuses, or legal fees that were not reported on an employee’s W-2. Report only payments to St. Louis residents, or to non-residents who performed work in the city, that exceeded $1,000 during the calendar year. You can attach 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC forms in place of listing each payee. Payments to booking agents, promoters, and entertainers must be categorized as “Entertainment.” If none of these apply, write “N/A.”

Section B: Business Allocation

If your business operates both inside and outside the city, you owe the 1 percent only on the portion attributable to city operations. Use the Section B worksheet to allocate your net profit and attach a list of all business locations. The allocated figure moves to Section C.

Section C: Computation of Tax

This is where the math closes out.

Line 9: taxable net profit. If you operate only in the city, this is your Section A net profit. If you allocated in Section B, enter the allocated amount.
Line 10: multiply Line 9 by 0.01 for your gross tax.
Line 11: if your business also pays the city’s Payroll Expense Tax on Form P-10, you may claim a credit equal to the lesser of 20 percent of the Payroll Expense Tax paid or 25 percent of Line 10. Section C-1 walks the calculation.

After the credit, subtract any city earnings tax that was withheld on payments made to you. What remains is your balance due.

What to Attach

Attachments vary by filing type. Gather these before you sit down with the form:

Type E-2: federal Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ, plus documentation for claimed expenses.
Type E-3: federal Form 1065 with all appropriate schedules. Individual partners’ K-1s are not required for LLCs or LLPs.
Type E-4: federal Form 1120 with all schedules and supporting documentation.
All filers using Section B: a list of business locations. Any 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC forms backing the Section A-2 disbursement report.

Missing attachments do not automatically kill a return, but they stall it. The Collector’s office will write asking for whatever is missing, and the return sits until the reply arrives.

How to Submit the Return

The city has no electronic filing system for earnings tax returns.² You have three ways to send it:

Mail the return and payment to Gregory F.X. Daly, Collector of Revenue, 1200 Market Street, Room 410, St. Louis, MO 63103. Personal checks, cashier’s checks, and money orders are accepted by mail. The envelope must be postmarked by April 15.⁶
Fax the completed return to 314-622-4847.
Email the return to earningstaxcor@stlouis-mo.gov.

Fax and email transmit only the return. You still have to arrange payment separately. You can also walk in during business hours and pay in person at the Market Street office with credit or debit card, cash, check, cashier’s check, or money order.⁶ General questions go to the Collector of Revenue at (314) 622-4101.

Paying Online

You can pay the earnings tax online through the city’s payitSt.Louis portal, but the portal handles only the payment. The return itself still has to go by mail, fax, or email.⁶ Credit and debit card payments carry a 2.45 percent processing fee; ACH bank transfers cost a flat $1.25 per transaction.² On a $5,000 balance, that is $122.50 by card against $1.25 by ACH.

Deadline, Extension, and Penalties

For calendar-year filers, Form E-234 is due April 15.⁷ Business filers can request a six-month extension on Form E-8, which moves the filing deadline to October 15, but only if you have no outstanding delinquencies with the city.⁸ An extension buys time to file, not time to pay. The tax is still due April 15, and anything unpaid after that accrues penalties and interest.

Late payment triggers a penalty of 5 percent of the unpaid tax for each month or partial month the return is late, capped at 25 percent.⁹ Interest runs at 1 percent per month, or 12 percent annually, until the balance is paid in full.² The two stack. A business owing $10,000 and filing six months late would face $2,500 in penalties plus $600 in interest before making any payment.

If you know you will owe but cannot complete the return in time, pay as much as you can by April 15 and file the E-8 extension. Interest on the unpaid tax still runs, but a timely extension prevents the 5-percent-per-month late-filing penalty from attaching to the return.

1
City of St. Louis. E-234 Form (Fillable) and Instructions
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City of St. Louis. File Individual Earnings Taxes
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City of St. Louis. Earnings Tax Forms and Documents
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City of St. Johnson. Earnings Tax Forms and Documents
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City of St. Louis. Taxable and Non-Taxable Items
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City of St. Louis. Make a Payment to the Collector of Revenue
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City of St. Louis. Collector of Revenue Calendar
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City of St. Louis. E-8 Form
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City of St. Louis. Individual Earnings Tax Information