Educate yourself.
S corporations, or Subchapter S corporations, produce several tax benefits as compared to sole proprietorships, partnerships, and C corporations.
The big benefit--and the one that people usually talk about--is the payroll tax savings. To understand how this works, let me compare two alternatives: A sole proprietor making $90,000 a year and an S Corporation making $90,000 a year.
Of course, the taxes that a sole proprietor pays depends on his or her filing status, itemized deductions and family size, but typically such a person might pay about $12,000 in federal income taxes. The person might also pay another chunk in state income taxes.
In addition to these income taxes, the proprietor also pays a 15.3% self-employment tax on the $90,000 of business profits. Roughly, this self-employment tax (which is equivalent to Social security and Medicare tax) equals $13,000.
Things usually work differently for the S corporation, however. To make calculations easy, assume the S corporation is owned by a single shareholder. In this case, the S corporation must break the $90,000 of profit into two buckets: wages and the leftover (which is called a distributive share). If the wages equal $40,000 and the leftover distributive share equals $50,000, the business pays Social Security and Medicare taxes (equivalent to self-employment tax) equal to roughly $6,000.
In this case, even though the two businesses make the exact same amount of money, the S corporation pays roughly $7,000 less in tax each year.