Case Study · Business Owner
Ending the Annual April Scramble
How an electrical contractor replaced tax-season guesswork with a quarterly rhythm.
This is a hypothetical case study created for illustrative purposes only. It does not represent an actual client, and any resemblance to a real person or business is coincidental. It is not indicative of future results and should not be construed as a guarantee of any outcome.
The Situation
A profitable business, a reactive tax approach
The owner, 45, runs an S-corp electrical contracting business that’s grown steadily for years. His salary, though, hadn’t been revisited since the business was much smaller. Every April brought the same routine: hand everything to the CPA, hope for the best, and find out what he owed after it was too late to do anything about it.
Age
45
Structure
S-Corporation
Primary Concern
Reactive Tax Filing
The Challenge
Three gaps behind a growing business
- Reasonable compensation had never been revisited — his salary was set years earlier and hadn’t kept pace with the business, creating either unnecessary payroll tax exposure or audit risk, depending on which direction it had drifted.
- No retirement plan beyond a basic IRA — he was leaving substantial tax-deferred savings capacity on the table that a properly structured plan could capture.
- No quarterly projections existed — every tax decision was made in hindsight, in April, when there was nothing left to actually do about it.
The Approach
Moving from hindsight to a calendar
- Reviewed and adjusted reasonable compensation to align with market rates for his role, balancing payroll tax efficiency against audit exposure.
- Established a Safe Harbor 401(k) with profit-sharing, meaningfully increasing his tax-deferred contribution capacity.
- Built a Quarterly Tax Moves Calendar with a projection run well before Q3, leaving time to actually act on decisions instead of just reading about them at filing time.
Illustrative Outcome
April went from a scramble to a formality — most of the meaningful decisions had already been made months earlier, and a larger share of income was sheltered in a properly structured retirement plan instead of fully taxed in the current year.
