[jly]

No. An individual who is the sole director, sole shareholder, and provides all of the services in an S-Corp will have any distributions classified as compensation subject to payroll taxes. There is a lot of established law on this subject.

[theli0nheart]

This is false. Any income in an S-corp that isn't paid via wages is not subject to FICA and Medicare, regardless of number of shareholders. That's a big reason why so many LLCs choose to classify themselves as S-corps. There are (or were, at least, before the latest tax bill) significant tax benefits to doing so.

It doesn't matter how many shareholders there are, since an S-corp is not a disregarded entity, like a single-member LLC.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation#FICA:

> As is the case for any other corporation, the FICA tax is imposed only with respect to employee wages and not on distributive shares of shareholders. Although FICA tax is not owed on distributive shares, the IRS and equivalent state revenue agencies may recategorize distributions paid to shareholder-employees as wages if shareholder-employees are not paid a reasonable wage for the services they perform in their positions within the company.

If you have data to support the contrary, please post your sources.

[pure]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. The single member S-Corp is a very common setup for individual freelancers/consultants precisely for this reason. FICA taxes aren't paid on distributions.

To do this, the single member has to pay themselves a "reasonable salary", but there aren't strict guidelines on this. It's a gray area, and some people push it (and lose), but it's a very common setup.

[jly]

You are technically correct, the problem being that the IRS does not define what a "reasonable wage" is.

However, the intention of the law is that true income is taxed as income and not as distributions. When one individual provides 100% of the services of a business, is not reinvesting profits or paying employees, and is the sole full-time worker, they should be treated as an employee and taxed accordingly. Many people abuse the vagueness of this but that doesn't mean the IRS will agree if you choose to pay your Uber earnings as distributions not subject to employment taxes.

You can read a summary of some of the established case law on this topic here: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2011/aug/nitti-aug2011....