Archives for November 2017

S Corporation and Reasonable Compensation

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If your company is organized as an S corporation, you may wonder whether it is better to take income from the company as salary or as cash distributions. Of the two options, distributions carry the least tax cost because they are not subject to employment taxes. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a paycheck from your firm. As a matter of fact, you must pay yourself a reasonable compensation.

IRS Warning about Reasonable Compensation

Over the years, the IRS has made a point of warning S corporations not to attempt to avoid federal employment taxes by having corporate officer/shareholders treat their compensation as cash distributions, payments of personal expenses, or loans instead of as wages. According to the IRS, distributions must be treated as wages to the extent the amounts are reasonable compensation for services rendered to the corporation.

What Is a “Reasonable” Compensation?

Thus, in order to avoid problems with the IRS, you should be sure to take a reasonable amount of salary if you receive any direct or indirect payments from your company. However, the tax law has no hard-and-fast guidelines regarding what is considered “reasonable compensation.” When the issue has come up in court, the determination has been based on the facts and circumstances of the particular case. Therefore, various factors have come into play, including:

  • Duties and responsibilities
  • Time and effort devoted to the business
  • Training and experience
  • What comparable businesses pay for similar services
  • Timing and manner of paying bonuses to key people
  • Payments to employees who are not shareholders
  • The corporation’s dividend-paying history
  • Compensation agreements
  • The use of a formula to determine compensation

The IRS has a special page dedicated to S corporation compensation where you can find out more information.

An Exception

What about an S corporation officer who doesn’t perform any services for the corporation — or whose services are very minor? In this relatively unusual situation, assuming the officer receives no direct or indirect pay, he or she would not be considered an employee.

For more help with individual or business taxes, connect with us today.

QuickBooks Online Lets You Customize Forms

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Your company’s brand

Your company’s “brand” can be composed of many things (and has many definitions), but it’s really about what pops into your customers’ minds when they think of you. Key components include your logo, your color scheme, and any other identifying visual element that people associate with your business.

A good way to reinforce this image is by making sure that a unifying graphic theme runs through every piece of print or web-based customer content you create, like your website, brochures, blog, and ebooks. Your brand should also be visible on all sales forms you dispatch, like invoices and receipts.

QuickBooks Online comes with its own default sales form style; this is the layout and content that will automatically display when you start a new transaction. You can easily change this and have it apply to all transactions.

Your logo and style

Here’s how it works. Click on the gear icon in the upper right of the screen, select Custom Form Styles under Settings and open the table of existing styles. There should be one labeled Standard. You can make either the default by clicking Make Default or Remove as default using the down arrows and links under ACTION at the far right of each row.

Click the edit link for the default style. This screen contains many of QuickBooks Online’s customization tools. Under the Design tab click Change up the template and go through the five design options available and leave the desired one selected. Then click on Make logo edits and add a logo. Browse for your logo file when the directory opens and double-click on it to add it to the top of your sales forms You can specify your logo placement and the size of it. Choose the color scheme you want by clicking on the Try other colors and the desired fonts by clicking Select a different font.

You can decide which fields should and shouldn’t appear on your sales forms

You won’t necessarily need to make every data field available on your sales forms. But you want to include every field you might possibly need without displaying extraneous content areas. QuickBooks Online lets you turn fields on and off and change their labels easily by checking and unchecking boxes.

Click the Content tab to start this process. Click the pencils on the right to edit each section. Among your options here are:

  • Form names. Do you want invoices to say “Invoice,” for example? Do you want to use form numbers and allow custom transaction numbers?
  • Company. How much of your company’s contact information should appear?
  • Customer. Do you want fields for Terms, Due date, etc?
  • Custom. Do you need to define custom fields?
  • Footer. Add or edit the text that should be displayed at the bottom of your sales forms.

You can customize the email your customers get with every sent form

Click on the Emails tab and write the message you want your customers to receive when you send them their invoice. You can include a thank you message and even payment instructions for your customers.

Click here for QuickBooks Online Getting Started Guide if you are interested in more information on how to use QuickBooks Online.

Consistent, well-designed sales forms will help promote your brand and present a polished, professional image to your customers.

We’re available to help with your QuickBooks. Give us a call today!