Reasonable compensation · benchmark report
You answer a ten-minute questionnaire about what you actually do in the business and where it is. We decompose the role into the occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks, pull the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile wages for each of them in your metro from the public OEWS tables, work the three approaches in the IRS's own reasonable-compensation job aid, and reconcile them into one documented figure with the method written out. The report goes to you and your CPA, within one business day. Your CPA decides the salary; the report is the benchmark behind the decision.
Free wage-range read for one role in one metro · $49 one-page memo · $149 full report · $99 re-issue each December on the new BLS release
Tell us your role and your metro. We reply by email with the BLS 25th, 50th and 75th percentile wages for that occupation in that metro, with the table cited.
You elected S status last year and this is the first year you have to put yourself on payroll, and the number you pick is going on a W-2 with nothing behind it but a guess. Or it is December, you are setting next year's payroll, and your CPA has asked what you pay yourself and why. Or a notice arrived and the question is no longer hypothetical. In each case the thing missing from your file is the same: a written benchmark that shows where the figure came from.
The IRS's own page on S-corporation compensation names the pattern it examines, a low salary alongside high distributions, so the owner who wants to be left alone needs the salary to be explainable on paper. A CPA or enrolled agent who serves S-corp owners can order the same report white-labelled for their clients; say so in the role field and we will reply about terms.
| Approach | What it asks | What the report puts in |
|---|---|---|
| Market | What would the business pay a stranger to do this work here? | BLS percentile wages per task occupation in your metro, weighted by your hours. |
| Income | What return does an owner reasonably expect on the capital, and what is left for labor? | Your revenue, net and capital figures from the questionnaire, with the arithmetic shown. |
| Cost | What would it cost to replace each function you perform? | The same occupations, costed function by function. |
The reconciliation explains why the three land where they do and which figure the report documents. The word "opinion" does not appear; the report is a benchmark and a file, and your CPA decides.
The BLS 25th, 50th and 75th percentile wages for one occupation in one metro, with the table cited. Same day.
One occupation, one metro, the three percentiles and a twelve-line rationale on one page, for your CPA's file. Within one business day.
Role decomposition with hours, BLS percentiles for each task occupation in your metro, the three IRS job-aid approaches reconciled to one figure, the factor narrative, the one-page summary for the minutes, and the data table as CSV. Eight to fifteen pages, within one business day.
The same report re-issued each December on the new BLS OEWS release, with the prior year's figure carried forward for comparison.
Prices in USD. CPAs and enrolled agents who want the report white-labelled for clients can ask through the form.
The established product is RCReports, which sells a single owner report for $499, accountant plans for $499 to $900 a year, and is resold by CPAs at $400 to $1,200 per report after a meeting and a few days. RCReports is a data firm, not a CPA firm, and its reports are built on the same public BLS wage tables and the same IRS job aid that ours are. The data is free and the method is published; what you are paying for in either case is the decomposition of your role, the pull of the right tables for the right metro, and the reconciliation written so a CPA can file it. We do that work in a day and price the full report at $149 and the one-page memo at $49, and the refund condition is specific: if a wage figure we cite does not match the BLS table we cite, or we cannot produce the report from your answers, the money comes back.
Operated by Reality Contact, LLC.
This is not tax, legal or financial advice, and it is not an opinion. It is a benchmark study for your and your CPA's file; your CPA decides your salary.
We do not file, sign, or present anything to the IRS or any state agency, and we do not represent you on a notice or in an audit.
Every wage figure traces to a published BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics table and release, which the report cites.
No guarantee that the IRS or a state accepts any figure. A benchmark is documentation, not protection.
Prices in USD. Refund conditions as stated.
Several, which is why the report starts with decomposition. A consultant who also sells, keeps the books and manages a contractor is a consultant for some hours, a sales worker for some, a bookkeeper for some and a manager for some, and the benchmark weights each occupation's metro wage by those hours. A single code for "founder" does not exist and would not be defensible on paper anyway.
Not in the law or the job aid. Rules of thumb like that are folklore; the IRS's approach is to ask what the work would cost in the market, what the owner's capital earns, and what replacing each function would cost. The report works those three and shows where they land for you, which is a better thing to have in the file than a ratio.
No document guarantees that. What the report does is put a contemporaneous, sourced benchmark behind the salary, which is what an examiner asks for and what most owners do not have. A benchmark is documentation, not protection.
If the number came with a written benchmark, you may not need to. If it came from experience or a rule of thumb, the report is the paper behind it, and CPAs order it for that reason. It is written to sit in the CPA's file beside the CPA's own judgment.
The BLS publishes the OEWS estimates once a year, and the report cites the release it used. The $99 re-issue exists because December payroll planning lands after the new release, and a report from the prior release is the one thing an examiner can say is out of date.