Do-it-yourself New Hampshire S Corporation Kit

The upcoming expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the new taxes coming from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mean that many small businesses will face a increase in taxes in the next year.

Fortunately, there is a way to combat this. By setting up your New Hampshire business as an S corporation, you can dramatically save money on payroll and income taxes. This can be thousands of dollars a year, depending on how much your business usually pays in taxes. And in most cases, you can set up a New Hampshire S corporation yourself. It just takes three simple steps.

Step 1. Form an LLC/Corporation

To begin, you will need to establish either a limited liability company or a corporation. The LLC or corporation will be the foundation for your S corporation. Complete a Certificate of Formation to form an LLC or complete an Articles of Incorporation form to form a corporation. Submit your form to the Department of State office in Concord.

Step 2. Apply for an EIN

Once you establish your LLC or corporation, you can take the next step: applying for an Employer Identification Number, or EIN. An EIN is like a Social Security Number for a business. To apply, fill out an SS-4 form and submit it to the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Revenue Service provides a downloadable version of this form on their website.

Step 3. Make the S Corporation Election

Once you receive your EIN, you can make the election to be treated as an S corporation. Fill out a 2553 form, which is also available from the IRS website. Submit the completed form to the Internal Revenue Service Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. There, the IRS will check that you followed proper procedure in making the election, and that you are eligible to make the election before you receive S corporation status.

My do-it-yourself S corporation kits provide a more comprehensive set of instructions if you don't feel confident using only the brief steps listed above. You can download either the LLC version or the regular corporation version of the kit. Each kit comes with clear, easy-to-follow instructions and examples of completed forms for reference.

LLC Do-It-Yourself Kit

Most business owners find that LLCs are easier to maintain than regular corporations. For that reason, I strongly recommend that you use an LLC as the foundation for your S corporation. In addition to detailed instructions, this kit comes with two set of sample LLC operating agreements. One set is for single-member (or single owner) LLCs and the other is for multiple-member (multiple owner) LLCs.

Regular Corporation Do-It-Yourself Kit

I also provide a corporation version of the do-it-yourself kit for business owners who choose to use a regular corporation as the foundation for their S corporation. The corporation version of the kit explains the pros and cons of incorporating in New Hampshire and how to balance them and provides detailed steps for completing all the needed forms. It also comes with a set of sample corporate bylaws, which can be used by you or your attorney as an aide in drafting your own corporate bylaws.