S Corp ReturnFind your name before you sign.

Two strings that have to match.

Before anyone signs, we find your name. The K-1 carries the shareholder's name. The wage form carries a name. We set them side by side. If one is missing, we stop. If they differ by a letter, a middle initial, or a spacing the software invented, we stop.

That stop feels fussy until you have seen the personal return reject a page it cannot match. The company and the person are supposed to be tied by that name. A draft that cannot agree with itself on who the shareholder is has not earned a signature.

We do not fix the spelling from memory. You tell us the legal name the wage form should carry, and we look at what the draft printed. The current form instructions decide the box. We decide whether the two strings are the same person.

The company with no K-1 on the personal return

There is a cousin of the spelling problem that looks quieter. The owner says the company is an S corporation. A return may even have been filed for the company. The personal return has no K-1. People treat that as a small oversight. It is a missing page.

The K-1 is how the company's year reaches the person. Profit, money taken out, and the wages story have to land somewhere on the personal return. If the page never arrives, the personal return is describing a year that did not include the company. We look for the page before we talk about whether the year was a good one.

Sometimes the page exists and was filed in a portal nobody opened. Sometimes it was never prepared because the books were never closed. Both leave the same first hunt. Which file holds the page that spells you?

What we do not do with the name

We do not invent a shareholder to make a draft look populated. We do not drop a name because the wage form was annoying to find. If more than one person owns the company, each person gets the same test. Each name on a K-1 has to be a real owner, and each owner who drew wages needs a wage form that spells them the same way.

A shop with one owner is the common case, and it is also the case where the owner is tempted to skip the test. You know who you are. The software still has to print you correctly. A merged mailbox name, a nickname, or last year's entity name left in the file will all fail this stop.

Bring both pages, or say you only have one. The form at the end of this page can take that sentence. If you would rather show the pages on a call, the calendar is the other door.

Send the two spellings