Payroll Structure for PA

[Nick Coons]

About six years ago, I hired my first PA (personal assistant). This was back when I had one company, so it was easy to hire her on to work for that company. She's since advanced in my company to higher-level tasks, and I'm in need of a new PA.

The difference today is that I own three companies (one of which is for my real estate investments). The PA that I'm looking for will perform miscellaneous tasks for all three companies (not evenly distributed at all) plus for myself that's not particularly related to any one company. So I'm trying to figure out how to structure payroll for this new employee. I have a few thoughts, but all of them seem to have some pretty major downsides, so I'm looking for advice on which direction to go, or options I haven't considered:

Option #1: Setup a separate LLC with its own payroll, have the new employee work and be paid from here, and then contribute from the three companies and personally in proportion to the work that they perform for each entity. This option would be "clean", but would require a lot of extra leg work (like various tax filings and accounting) that seem overkill for one employee.

Option #2: Have the new employee be employed by all three companies and receive three paychecks. That's a bit of a nightmare for the employee trying to manage their withholding appropriately. This also doesn't account for the work they do for me not related to any of the companies.

Option #3: Have the new employee work for one of the companies and receive their paycheck from there, then the other two companies along with me personally pay a fee to lease that employee. This might be the cleanest way to go, as it keeps the actual complex employee expenses and tax filings in one company, and the other companies (along with myself personally) just have a simple monthly expense.

If it's important to note, the employee will be on a fixed salary. There may or may not be benefits (like health insurance) involved, depending on what whoever I hire opts for.