BobKamman
Level 15

@Dusty2 "That statement stands for itself.  It has nothing to do with distributions.  If they made a profit and they perform services for the S-Corp they have to pay themselves a salary. PS:  If I am wrong please educate me!"

Yes, you are wrong, but you can educate yourself by following through with an explanation of what IRS does in an S-corp audit.  The issue is payroll taxes, not income tax.  They can recharacterize distributions as salary, and assess FICA and FUTA.  But they can't recharacterize nothing into something.  

For example, a corporation has a profit of $100,000 but uses it to pay off the loan on the machinery and equipment it needs to manufacture products that create sales.  If it did not pay off the loan, the bank would repossess it and they would be out of business.  An IRS auditor is not going to tell the owner, "instead of paying the bank, you should have written yourself a check, then closed up shop."  

There are no court cases where no distributions were taken but payroll taxes were assessed.  The only arrow IRS has in its quiver is to claim, "you worked, you received payments, therefore you were paid taxable compensation."