S Corp Requirements AlternativeThe election on file.

Someone told you the company elected years ago, and the folder has no IRS acceptance you can hold. Form 2553 is the election that turns an eligible company into an S corp for tax. It names the year the election should start, and it is signed by the shareholders who have to sign. A draft that was never sent is not an election. A conversation with a former preparer is not an election. We ask for the signed copy and for the IRS acceptance.

The timing is a date, not a season. A company on the calendar year that wants the election for the year already in progress files by the 15th day of the third month. That is 15 March. Filing in the prior year, for a start on the next 1 January, is the other ordinary path. We write the path you are actually on, because the two paths do not share a deadline.

Missing the day does not always mean the election is gone. There are relief procedures for a late election, and they depend on how the company and the owners have already reported, and on why the form was late. We will not describe those procedures as a promise. We will read the facts you have and say whether a relief filing is even the right next paper.

What we will not do is backdate a story. If the wage was never paid, and the books were never kept as an S corp, a late form does not rewrite the year. The requirements run together. The election, the wage, and the closed months are one list. A form without the other two is a form we will not pretend is enough.

The acceptance letter is the paper we want in the folder beside the signed form. It has a date. When a lender or a buyer asks for proof, that pair is the proof we hand them. If the letter is missing, we say it is missing. We do not reconstruct it from memory. Ordering a transcript or a copy is a step we can name. Inventing the date is not.

A company that already elected years ago still has to keep the copy. Elections do not expire from old age. They end when the company stops qualifying or when someone revokes them. The old letter is how we know the start. The monthly list is how we know it has not ended. Both belong in the file we open with you.

Bring the signed 2553 if you have it, the acceptance letter if you have it, and the cap table as of this month. If you have none of those, bring the question in plain words. Someone told you to elect, and you do not know if it happened. Send the note even if that is your only question. We will tell you which paper is missing and whether the year you are in can still be the year of the election.

The note on this page is not the filing. Filing happens only after the facts are read and a scope is signed. Until then the call is a reading of the list. You leave with the name of the next paper. We do not send you away on a hunch. We name the year on the IRS acceptance before we talk about any other date.