The wage you take and the work you do have not been in the same conversation this year. Owner pay is a conversation about the work you actually do in a normal week, and Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO and the Entrepreneur's CFO, holds that conversation with the books open rather than with a formula copied off a website.
What you do in a normal week. What a person who is not an owner would be paid to do those same tasks in your market. How the company can afford that pay. What you have already taken as wages through the provider you run. Those four points are the conversation.
We do not print a percentage. A page that says owners should take a fixed slice of profit is making up a rule. Your week is not a slice.
Driving wages toward nothing, so the rest of the profit looks lighter, causes trouble. Paying a wage the company cannot fund causes trouble too. We will say which end you are near if the books show it.
Payroll setup can be part of getting this right. Releasing each pay run stays with you on the provider you already chose. The wage is a wage, with the deposits that follow, on the provider you choose.
Every Texan can appreciate a night at Toyota Center, where the Rockets play, a franchise with two championships. You see the score. We see a conversation about whether the owner's pay still matches the work. There is no trophy number on this page.
Bring a short description of your week and the wages paid so far this year. Those two notes are the whole opening we need before the conversation can begin.
Wages belong in the wage accounts. A draw belongs in the draw account. Mixing them makes the profit look like pay, or the pay look like profit, and the return then tells the wrong story about your week. The wage amount and the draw amount are recorded in the month the cash left the account.
If the company cannot fund the wage the work would suggest, we say that out loud. The answer might be a smaller wage, a later wage, or a conversation about what the company can actually carry. We do not pick a number that looks serious and then fails on payday.
Write down the tasks that are yours and the tasks a hired person already does. That split keeps the conversation honest. Pay follows the tasks that are yours, and only to the extent the company can fund them. The words under your name on a business card do not set the pay. The week is the conversation, and the books have to be able to pay what the week supports. The week you described is the whole study we need to start.
Say what you do in the business and what you have paid yourself so far.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.