
ENTITY CLASSIFICATION
Entity Classification is an integral portion for any corporation.
C Corporation: The C corporation is the standard (or default) corporation under IRS rules. A C corporation, under United States federal income tax law, refers to any corporation that is taxed separately from its owners. Many companies, including most major corporations, are treated as C corporations for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Only C corporations are subject to corporate income taxation.
S Corporation: An S corporation, for United States federal income tax, is a closely held corporation (or, in some cases, a limited liability company (LLC) or a partnership) that makes a valid election to be taxed under Subchapter S of Chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code. In general, S corporations do not pay any income taxes. Instead, the corporation's income and losses are divided among and passed through to its shareholders. The shareholders must then report the income or loss on their own individual income tax returns. As with partnerships, the income, deductions, and tax credits of an S corporation flow through to shareholders annually, regardless of whether distributions are made.[5] Thus, income is taxed at the shareholder level and not at the corporate level. Payments to S shareholders by the corporation are distributed tax-free to the extent that the distributed earnings were previously taxed.
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Like a C corporation, an S corporation is generally a corporation under the law of the state in which the entity is organized. However, with modern incorporation statutes making the establishment of a corporation relatively easy, firms that might traditionally have been run as partnerships or sole proprietorships are often run as corporations with a small number of shareholders in order to take advantage of the beneficial features of the corporate form; this is particularly true of firms established prior to the advent of the modern limited liability company. Therefore, taxation of S corporations resembles that of partnerships. Unlike a C corporation, an S corporation is not eligible for a dividends received deduction. Unlike a C corporation, an S corporation is not subject to the 10 percent of taxable income limitation applicable to charitable contribution deductions.