Reasonable compensation for S-corp officers is a judgment call reviewed every year, and any correction has to run through an actual payroll transaction — not a year-end adjustment made after the fact.

The multi-member LLC vs. S-corp question isn't a one-time decision. With a new tax year approaching and profits shifting, this is a good time to revisit whether the current structure still fits.

S-corp elections don't run on the calendar most people assume. For a new entity, the real deadline is tied to formation date — not January 1 — and missing it doesn't have to mean waiting a full year.

Whether an error gets fixed with a superseding return or an amended return depends entirely on one thing: has the extended due date already passed? Here's how the two mechanisms actually differ.

Q4 often brings a wave of seasonal hiring. Worker classification runs under more than one federal standard at once — and the labor-law test is currently mid-transition. Here's what to document before the first paycheck goes out.

Tax season can be a challenging time for many. Navigating complex tax codes, meeting deadlines, and ensuring accuracy requires more than just basic knowledge. That’s why finding reliable professional tax preparation solutions is essential. Whether you are an individual, a high-net-worth taxpayer, or a small business owner, having expert assistance can make a significant difference in managing your federal tax responsibilities effectively. Understanding Professional Tax Prepar

September 15 was the extended deadline for calendar-year Forms 1065 and 1120-S. The penalty for missing it is one of the more expensive per-day costs in the tax code — and it applies even when no tax is owed.

A trade or business generally must file Form 8300 within 15 days after receiving more than $10,000 in cash in one transaction or related transactions. Cash definitions, aggregation, customer statements, e-filing, records, and structuring rules matter.

For 2026, the business standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile. Vehicle weight, business use, depreciation elections, and documentation determine whether mileage, actual costs, Section 179, or bonus depreciation is available.

An asset purchase and a stock or equity purchase can produce very different basis, tax-character, liability, contract, and reporting results. LLC interest sales require separate entity-classification analysis.

Schedule K-1 reports an owner's share of pass-through tax items, not simply cash received. Distributions, basis, loss limitations, guaranteed payments, and separately stated items can all create differences.

A domestic LLC generally defaults to disregarded-entity treatment with one owner and partnership treatment with two or more owners, unless a valid election or special rule applies.

An LLC receives a default federal tax classification based largely on the number and type of owners unless a valid corporate election is made. The state-law entity and federal tax classification are separate issues.

When your quarterly Form 941 filings don't reconcile with your annual W-2/W-3 totals or your deposits, the IRS notices — and the letters that follow are worth understanding.

Ask most business owners what tax rate they pay and they'll give you their top bracket—37%, 32%, 24%, whatever it is. That number is their marginal rate, and while it matters for decision-making at the margin, it's not the rate they actually pay on all of their income. The effective tax rate—the percentage of total income actually paid in federal taxes—is almost always lower, sometimes significantly so. Understanding the distinction between these two concepts isn't just an ac

The default advice for most small business owners who want to reduce self-employment taxes is to elect S-Corp status. And for the right situation, that's correct. But the reflexive assumption that an S-Corp is always better than a C-Corp ignores scenarios where the corporate flat tax rate—21% under TCJA and maintained under the OBBBA—produces meaningfully better after-tax outcomes. Understanding when a C-Corp wins requires looking at effective tax rates, retained earnings str

Cryptocurrency isn't a fringe asset class anymore—small business owners are using it to pay contractors, accept customer payments, hold it as an investment, and make purchases. And the IRS has been unambiguous since 2014: cryptocurrency is property for federal tax purposes, not currency. Every transaction involving crypto has potential tax consequences, including transactions that feel routine. Beginning with certain 2025 digital asset transactions reported in 2026, the IRS i

Making the S-Corp election is theoretically straightforward: file Form 2553, get confirmation, done. In practice, Form 2553 has a surprising number of failure points, and many business owners don't discover the problem until they're mid-audit or trying to prepare returns years after the fact. Here's where the election goes wrong. Missing the Filing Deadline For a calendar-year entity, the S-Corp election is generally due no more than 2 months and 15 days after the beginning o

Starting a business costs money before you make any. Market research, legal fees, training, licenses, state filing fees—all of this happens before you open. The IRS has specific rules for how these pre-opening costs are treated, and a lot of new business owners either miss the deduction entirely or get the timing wrong. Here's how it actually works. What Are Startup Costs? Startup costs are amounts paid or incurred to investigate the creation of an active business or to creat

There has been a lot of confusion around Form 1099-K over the last few years. For a long time, many small sellers and freelancers only received Form 1099-K if they had more than $20,000 in payments and more than 200 transactions through a third-party payment platform. Then the threshold became a moving target, which created a lot of panic and bad information online. But the more important point never changed: The 1099-K does not create the tax liability. The income does. If y