Do-it-yourself Michigan S Corporation Kit

While turning your business into an S corporation can be extremely beneficial, let's face it: It can be discouraging to pay some accountant or attorney hundreds or thousands of dollars for the set up. But here's a secret many veteran entrepreneurs know. You can do the work of turning your business into an S Corporation yourself. All you need to do is fill out a three, relatively simple forms.

What's more, you don't have to struggle with the forms yourself, you can work from the instructions provided in one of my affordable, instantly downloadable Michigan S corporation kits.

But before I describe how to purchase and download a kit, let me give you a birds-eye view about how the process works so you can decide for yourself whether a do-it-yourself S corporation is even practical in your situation....

Three Forms to Fill Out

As mentioned, to form an S corporation in Michigan, you need to fill out three forms: either articles of formation or articles of incorporation to create the LLC or corporation that you'll use for the S corporation, an employer identification number form to alert the IRS to the new LLCs or corporation's existence, and then the election statement to document that all of the LLC's members or all of the corporation's shareholders are okay with the S corporation tax accounting rules.

One Quick Clarification

You should know that you don't actually need to be a corporation to be an S corporation. An S corporation is an eligible entity that makes an election to use the tax laws found in Subchapter S of the tax code. Most often, an eligible entity is a corporation or a limited liability company. You can accordingly use either of these platforms to make the election to be treated as an S corporation.

Do-it-yourself Options

Because a business owner has two options for making the S corporation election, I've created and will give away as downloadable zip files two do-it-yourself kits to guide a Michigan business owner through the process for setting up a Subchapter S corporation.

Michigan S Corporation Kit (with LLC as platform)

The LLC version of my do-it-yourself kit gives step-by-step instructions on how to create an S corporation using a limited liability company as the platform. Personally, I prefer using an LLC. It's less complicated and messy, and in Michigan (as in most states) it's a tad cheaper to form an LLC than it is to form a traditional corporation. As a bonus, I include two sample operating agreements for your business: one for single-member LLCs and one for multiple member LLCs.

Michigan S Corporation Kit (with corporation as platform)

The other option you have as a business owner is to use a traditional corporation as the platform for your S corporation. Although I prefer using an LLC in most circumstances, situations exist where using a traditional corporation can be the right choice. If it's really important to have "Inc." or "Corporation" in the name of your business for branding or credibility, for example, using a traditional corporation may be the appropriate choice.

The traditional corporation version of the Michigan S Corporation kit also discusses the benefits and drawbacks of forming a corporation in Michigan, and it also gives detailed instructions for incorporating your business and making the election to be treated as an S corporation. I include a set of corporate bylaws that can be used by you or your attorney as a starting point for drafting up a set of customized bylaws for your corporation.