Reporting Compliance of S corporations

WASHINGTON – Internal Revenue Service officials announced today the launch of a study to assess the reporting compliance of S corporations. The study, carried out under the National Research Program (NRP), will examine 5,000 randomly selected S corporation returns from tax years 2003 and 2004.

S corporations are entities whose income and deductions pass through the corporate structure to the shareholders. Since the mid-1980s, the number of S corporations has risen rapidly, growing from 724,749 in 1985 to 3,154,377 in 2002.

The growth rate has been even faster among S corporations with more than $10 million in assets. >From 1985 to 2002, the number of these larger S corporations grew more than ten-fold, from 2,305 to 26,096.

Program officials expect these audits to begin later this year. The last reporting compliance study of S corporations involved about 10,000 returns from tax year 1984, prior to the tax law changes that spurred the growth in S corporations. The new NRP initiative will use a study approach designed to reach statistically valid conclusions regarding compliance behavior, while using a smaller sample of returns than in the past.

For more information - visit the IRS Newsroom