Limited number of shareholders: An S corp cannot have more than 100 shareholders, meaning it can't go public and limiting its ability to raise capital from new investors.
Shareholders may only be individuals, certain trusts, estates, and certain exempt organizations (such as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit). Shareholders may not be partnerships or corporations. Shareholders must be US citizens or residents. The business may have no more than 100 shareholders.
The 60/40 rule is a simple approach that helps S corporation owners determine a reasonable salary for themselves. Using this formula, they divide their business income into two parts, with 60% designated as salary and 40% paid as shareholder distributions.
The owners of LLCs and S corporations are not personally responsible for business debts and liabilities. Instead, the LLC or the S corp, as the owner of the business, is responsible for its debts and liabilities.
S corp owners have the option of paying themselves a regular salary if they are involved in their business's daily operations. As an employee of the company, you are required by the IRS to receive a salary and file a W-2 to report your wages so that employment taxes can be accurately determined and paid.
Courts can, in some cases, hold individual owners, members, or shareholders personally liable for business debts and obligations. This is where piercing the corporate veil comes in. Piercing is possible if the owners fail to maintain a separate legal existence between their personal affairs and the company.
Another common rule, dubbed the S Corp Salary 50/50 Rule is even simpler, with 50% of the business income paid in salary and 50% in profit distribution. However, the salary you end up with using these kinds of rules is arbitrary and may not pass muster with the IRS.
For tax efficiency, most company directors will choose to pay themselves a low salary and take any further money from the company in the form of dividends. This is because dividends are taxed at a lower rate than salary, and avoid national insurance contributions.
An S corp offers business owners three ways for paying themselves: distributions, salary, or a combo of both. Choosing which option is best has a lot to do with how you contribute to the company and how well the business does financially.
Because of the one-class-of-stock restriction, an S corporation cannot allocate losses or income to specific shareholders. Allocation of income and loss is governed by stock ownership, unlike partnerships or LLCs taxed as partnerships where the allocation can be set in the partnership agreement or operating agreement.
Owning real estate through an S-Corp has the obvious benefit of shielding personal financial liability from any loss or the property may incur. If you buy personal property through your S-Corp, any earned income on the property would be passed through directly to the shareholders on their individual tax returns.
The S corporation can pay you rent for the home office. The S corporation can pay you for the costs of a home office under an “accountable” plan for employee business expense reimbursement. Accountable Plan for S-Corporation Deductions and Reimbursements.
You may or may not have heard of the S Corp Salary 60/40 rule. The guideline encourages setting reasonable compensation between 60% and 40% of the business's net profits. The IRS does not set this guideline. It should not be relied on as the only factor for deciding S corporation reasonable compensation.
The direct answer to whether an S Corp can pay a shareholder's mortgage is no. Personal expenses, including mortgage payments, cannot be directly paid by the corporation without significant tax implications and potential violations of IRS regulations.
Draws are not personal income, however, which means they're not taxed as such. Draws are a distribution of cash that will be allocated to the business owner. The business owner is taxed on the profit earned in their business, not the amount of cash taken as a draw.
The 60/40 Rule S Corp Approach: A Closer Look
The most common strategy used to specify the amount of earnings paid in salary and distributions is the 60-40 approach. Under this strategy, the owner would pay themself 60% of earnings as a salary and the other 40% as distributions.
Transferring funds from a single-member LLC business account to your personal account is generally treated as an "owner's draw" and is not taxable income since the LLC's income is already reported on your personal tax return. However, the transfer itself doesn't trigger a tax event.
S Corp owners must file Form 1120-S, U.S. Income Tax Return for an S Corporation. Both C and S Corps follow the same guidelines for filing taxes with no income. If you had no income, you must file the corporation income tax return, regardless of whether you had expenses or not.
Some unique income tax rules apply to S corporations regarding compensation and fringe benefits paid to shareholders who own greater than 2% of the corporation. Under these S corp income tax rules, a greater than 2% shareholder is taxed as a partner in a partnership for fringe benefits received.
S Corps that lose their “S” status must typically wait five years before being able to re-elect it. As mentioned, deliberately violating one of the rules, such as transferring stock to an ineligible shareholder, is not a good thing.
Historically, S Corp owners were audited at the low rate of 0.05 percent. However, starting in 2021, the IRS began to prioritize auditing S Corporations and partnerships, meaning your likelihood of being selected for audit has increased in recent years.
1. Asset protection. One major advantage of an S corporation is that it provides owners limited liability protection, regardless of its tax status. Limited liability protection means that the owners' personal assets are shielded from the claims of business creditors—whether the claims arise from contracts or litigation ...
If the corporation or LLC cannot pay its debts, creditors can normally only go after the assets owned by the company and not the personal assets of the owners. However, the business owner can also be held responsible for corporate or LLC debts in certain situations.
Because a corporation is a legal entity separate from its owners, it continues to exist even when owners die or leave the business. If the formation documents don't limit the corporation's term of existence, it will remain in existence until articles of dissolution are filed with the state.