Tax
Owner and entity returns filed together, reasonable-compensation analysis for S-corps, quarterly-estimate math, and the year-end moves that shape the April number.
Learn MoreIndustries
Small & Mid-Size Private Companies the CPA for owner-operators.
Businesses run by the people who own them, mostly under $50M in revenue, mostly not planning an exit. The tax and accounting work is quieter than a private-equity roll-up but the decisions matter as much.
What We See
The questions owner-operators bring us every year.
Owner compensation is the first one. For an S-corp owner, the split between W-2 salary and K-1 distributions changes payroll taxes, retirement-plan contribution limits, and the reasonable-compensation defense in an IRS exam. Get the split wrong for years and you either overpay payroll tax or invite a reclassification.
K-1 planning follows: quarterly-estimate math for the owner personally, coordination with a spouse’s income, and the shifting deduction limitations on state and local tax and qualified business income. Every K-1 that lands in April was decided by a hundred small choices made across the prior twelve months.
Year-end planning is the annual event: accelerating income into this year or deferring into next, buying equipment before December 31, funding a SEP or a defined-benefit plan, and handling retained earnings in a way that doesn’t trigger accumulated-earnings tax. Succession sits behind all of it — the first tax move you make five years before a handoff usually matters more than the handoff paperwork itself.
Services for Private Companies
Three practices, one team.
Accounting & Assurance
Monthly close, payroll for owner and staff, and the reporting cadence a private-company board or lender wants without turning the office into a finance department.
Learn MoreConsulting
Entity restructures, buy-sell agreements between partners, and multi-year succession work when an owner starts thinking about handing off.
Learn MoreCommon Questions
Questions private-company owners bring us most.
Reasonable compensation is the standard, and reasonable is defined by what someone else would pay for the work you do. We benchmark against BLS data and industry compensation studies, document the analysis, and typically land W-2 in a range that supports the retirement contribution you want without inviting an IRS reclassification of distributions as wages. There’s no magic ratio — the right answer depends on your role, your industry, and your total compensation target.
Roughly when profits pass what a reasonable salary would be for the owner’s role — often around $75K to $100K of net income in South Florida, though the exact break-even depends on state tax, your health-insurance situation, and your retirement plan. Below that the payroll-tax savings don’t cover the payroll and compliance overhead. Above it the savings can be several thousand a year and grow linearly with income.
Most of it. Equipment purchases, retirement-plan setup, entity elections, cost-seg studies, charitable gifts, and any income-timing decisions all have to be complete by year-end. The exceptions are IRA contributions (through April 15) and SEP-IRA contributions (through the extended return deadline). By December 31 we’ve usually finalized the picture and by mid-January you know what the April number looks like.
Three things: a current valuation you can defend, an entity structure that supports gifting or an installment sale, and a compensation history for the next generation that establishes they’re doing the work. Annual gifting within the exclusion, a grantor-retained annuity trust, or a leveraged installment sale to a defective grantor trust are the standard tools — which one fits depends on the value, your estate picture, and how much you plan to stay involved. Five years is enough runway to do this well; two isn’t.