Who We Work With
CPA for Corporations & S-Corps in San Antonio
Incorporating solves some problems and creates a compliance calendar. The corporate return is separate from your personal one, it falls due earlier, and the two have to agree with each other.
We prepare corporate returns for San Antonio businesses — S-corporations for the most part, alongside C-corporations — and handle the filings that sit around them.
Who this is for
- S-corporations filing Form 1120-S and issuing K-1s to shareholders
- C-corporations filing Form 1120
- Companies with more than one shareholder, or a change in ownership during the year
- Incorporated businesses running payroll for employees or owner-officers
The corporate return and the personal one are a single problem
An S-corporation does not generally pay tax itself. It reports, passes profit through to shareholders on Schedule K-1, and the tax is paid on the personal returns. That makes the two filings one exercise — the K-1 has to be right before the personal return can be, and the corporate return is due earlier in the year.
Preparing them in sequence, with a gap and a different preparer in between, is how corporate figures end up amended after the fact. Planning them together is the whole point of keeping them under one roof.
Reasonable compensation is the one to get right
An owner who works in their own S-corporation is expected to take a reasonable salary through payroll before taking distributions. Salary carries employment tax; distributions do not. The incentive to set the salary low is obvious, and so is the reason it draws scrutiny.
There is no formula and no safe percentage, whatever you may read. What is reasonable depends on the work actually performed, what the role would cost to hire, and what the business can support. Setting it deliberately and being able to explain how you arrived at it is worth more than picking a number that looks defensible.
Texas franchise tax and the Public Information Report
No state income tax is not the same as no state filing. Texas levies a franchise tax on entities doing business here, and incorporated businesses generally carry an annual obligation to the Comptroller whether or not any tax is actually owed.
Thresholds and reporting requirements have been revised more than once in recent years, so this is a filing to confirm annually rather than to assume from what applied last time. Letting it lapse can put an entity's right to transact business in Texas at risk — a disproportionate consequence for a missed form, and an avoidable one.
Payroll, and statements someone else will read
Once there are employees — or an owner on payroll — deposits and quarterly filings run on their own schedule, and the penalties for missing them are mechanical rather than negotiable. Worker classification deserves the same attention: treating an employee as a contractor is among the more expensive errors available.
Year-end financial statements matter well beyond the return. A bank assessing a loan, an SBA application, a bonding company, or a prospective buyer will all read them, and they need to be prepared to a standard that holds up outside your own office.
Common questions
- When is our corporate return due?
- Earlier than your personal one. Calendar-year S-corporations face a spring deadline roughly a month ahead of the individual filing date, which exists so shareholders receive their K-1s in time to file. Extensions are available, but they extend the filing, not the payment.
- Do we owe Texas franchise tax if we made no profit?
- Possibly not — but the annual obligation to the Comptroller can exist regardless of profit, and the thresholds have changed in recent years. It is worth confirming each year rather than carrying forward last year's answer.
- How should we set our owner salary?
- Deliberately, and with a reason you could explain to someone else. It should reflect the work actually done and what the role would cost to fill. There is no safe-harbour percentage.
- We already have a bookkeeper. Do we still need a CPA?
- They do different jobs. A bookkeeper keeps the records; the corporate return, the compensation question, the franchise tax filing, and the planning that runs across all three are separate work. Good bookkeeping makes that work cheaper, not unnecessary.
This page is general information, not individualised tax advice. Tax rules change and every situation differs — please speak with us before acting on anything here.