Someone said the election might still be open, and you have not read the form. The window is printed on the form for that year, and Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO and the Entrepreneur's CFO, reads that form with us before anyone files.
For a calendar year company, owners often have until two months and 15 days after the year starts. Filing during the prior year is the other common path. That is the shape of the rule people mean when they ask if it is too late. The form for that year is the authority, and we confirm the date on it.
Late relief exists in some cases and it is not a promise. If the window looks shut, we say shut. We do not decorate a late filing as if it were on time.
The company has to be the kind of company the election is for, and the owners have to agree to it. We look at the formation papers and the owner list you give us. If something in that list would block the election, you hear it before a form goes out.
Books that are a mess do not block the calendar, but they do block a clean first year. We would rather close the open months than file an election on numbers nobody trusts.
A long season that a Texan can picture still ends on the date the schedule prints, and the years before that ending do not move the last day. An S election is a form that has a window, in the same plain sense that a season has a schedule, and once the form is in, the books have to keep matching how that election taxes the year.
Owner pay becomes a real conversation once the election is in effect. That conversation has its own page. It is not a percentage we invent.
The election changes how the year is taxed. It does not close the months for you, and it does not set your pay. The books still have to be kept, and the wage still has to match the work. We say that on the same call as the window, so the form is not the only thing anyone remembers.
If you file the election, the next twelve months have a job. Close each one, keep wages and draws apart, and save the letters that show the owners agreed. We will ask for those letters before the return, not after a notice arrives. A clean election with messy books is still a messy year. The form does not do the close.
If a later year needs a different choice, that is a new form and a new window. We do not treat the first election as a permanent mood. Each year we ask whether the books still match the way that election taxes the profit.
Name the entity and the year you hope to elect.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.