Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited.

What is a reasonable salary for the owner and sole member of a small S-Corp?
Generally if you're a sole S-Corp employee - it is hard to explain how the S-Corp earned more money than your work is worth. So it is reasonable that all the S-Corp profits would be pouring into your salary. Especially when the amounts are below the FICA SS limits when separating salary and distributions are a clear sign of FICA tax evasion. So while it is hard to say if you're going to be subject to audit, my bet is that if you are - the IRS will claim that you underpaid yourself. One of the more recent cases dealing with this issue is Watson v Commissioner. In this case, Watson (through his S-Corp which he solely owned) received distributions from a company in the amounts of ~400K. He drew 24K as salary, and the rest as distributions. The IRS forced re-characterizing distributions into salary up to 93K (the then-SS portion of the FICA limit), and the courts affirmed. Worth noting, that Watson didn't do all the work himself, and that was the reason that some of the income was allowed to be considered distribution. That wouldn't hold in a case where the sole shareholder was the only revenue producer, and that is exactly my point. I feel that it is important to add another paragraph about Nolo, newspaper articles, and charlatans on the Internet. YOU CANNOT RELY ON THEM. You cannot defend your position against IRS by saying "But the article on Nolo said I can not pay SE taxes on my earnings!", you cannot say "Some guy called littleadv lost an argument with some other guy called Ben Miller because Ben Miller was saying what everyone wants to hear", and you can definitely not say "But I don't want to pay taxes!". There's law, there are legal precedents. When some guy on the Internet tells you exactly what you want to hear - beware. Many times when it is too good to be true - it is in fact not true. Many these articles are written by people who are interested in clients/business. By the time you get to them - you're already in deep trouble and will pay them to fix it. They don't care that their own "advice" got you into that trouble, because it is always written in generic enough terms that they can say "Oh, but it doesn't apply to your specific situation". That's the main problem with these free advice - they are worth exactly what you paid for them. When you actually pay your CPA/Attorney - they'll have to take responsibility over their advice. Then suddenly they become cautious. Suddenly they start mentioning precedents and rulings telling you to not do things. Or not, and try and play the audit roulette, but these types are long gone when you get caught.