Clear Plain Answers.
The 2026 Business Structure Decision Kit

The $5,000-a-year question every self-employed person eventually Googles at midnight.

"Should I be an LLC or an S corp?" Answer it right and you keep thousands, every year, forever. Answer it from a 30-second TikTok and you either overpay the IRS — or buy yourself paperwork, penalties, and an audit profile. This kit answers it with your numbers. In about ten minutes. For $7.99.

Get the Decision Kit — $7.99 →

Instant download · 2026 Edition · yours forever

The Problem

Everyone has an opinion about your business structure. Almost nobody shows their math.

Ask the internet and you'll get three answers in three scrolls:

Here's the uncomfortable truth underneath all of it: they're all describing different businesses. At $40k of profit, the S corp usually loses money. At $150k it usually saves about $5,000 a year. Past the 2026 income thresholds, a second, bigger effect kicks in that almost nobody on social media even mentions. The answer isn't a vibe. It's arithmetic — your arithmetic.
The Honest Turn

The famous "15.3% savings" is overstated. Here's the honest version.

That headline math ignores four things that shrink it — sometimes by half:

  1. Overhead is real. Payroll service, an extra tax return, state fees: $1,200–$3,000 a year.
  2. The 20% QBI haircut. Paying yourself a salary shrinks another valuable deduction. Costs real money.
  3. You lose a deduction sole props get. (Half of self-employment tax — most calculators forget it exists.)
  4. Social Security caps out. Past $184,500, the "15.3%" you're supposedly saving is actually 2.9%.

Our calculator counts all four. When the honest answer at your income is "don't elect — you'd lose $2,000 a year," this kit says so, plainly, and tells you what to do instead. A $7.99 product can afford to tell you the truth. A $299 formation package can't.

Get the Decision Kit — $7.99 →

Instant download · 2026 Edition · yours forever

What's In The Kit

Three tools. One answer. About ten minutes.

Tool 1

The Interactive Decision Tool

2 minutes

Answer a few plain-English questions about your real situation — owners, profit, growth plans. Land on your recommendation with the reasons, the traps to check, and exactly what to read next. Works in any browser, nothing to install.

Tool 2

The Breakeven Calculator

5 minutes

Five yellow cells: your profit, a fair salary, your state costs. It returns one green number — what the S corp actually saves (or costs) you per year, all four drags included. Plus a ladder showing how the answer changes as you grow from $30k to $500k.

Tool 3

The Guide

The depth, when you want it

Twenty pages, nine short chapters, zero jargon: how the savings mechanism really works, how to set a salary that survives IRS scrutiny (with the real court cases), how to file the one-page election, when partnerships and C corps win instead, and the high-earner rules where the serious money hides.

Receipts, Not Claims

Three owners ran it. Three different answers. That's how you know it's honest.

Maya
Designer · $60k profit
Verdict: Don't elect

The election would lose her $2,011/yr. She keeps her simple setup and maxes deductions instead. (Yes, our own kit talks people out of the fancy option. Often.)

Dre
Contractor · $150k profit
Verdict: Elect

Net saving $4,999 every year after every honest drag. His payroll runs on autopilot for $55/month.

Priya
Consultant · $400k profit
Verdict: Elect — for different reasons

$7,234/yr, plus a state-tax play worth even more that her structure unlocks (it's in Chapter 8).

Same model. Same math. Different businesses, different answers — which is exactly what real analysis looks like.

The Price

What this usually costs people

The usual routeThe usual price
An exploratory session with a professional$300–$500
A formation website's "consultation" + setup$299 + subscriptions (and they're selling the setup)
Getting it wrong for two years$10,000+ in overpaid tax — or overhead you never needed
The Decision Kit$7.99
Why $7.99? Because the marginal cost of a PDF is zero and we'd rather have ten thousand smart owners than a hundred consulting clients. You bring the output to your own tax professional and spend your money on confirmation, not discovery.
Get the Decision Kit — $7.99 →

Instant download · works on any device · yours forever, including the 2026 Edition updates to this edition's files

One Real Date · No Countdown Timers

One real date matters here: March 15. That's the IRS deadline for an S-corp election to count for the current tax year (late relief exists, but clean beats clever). Every month you're on the wrong side of this decision at $150k of profit costs about $415. There's no countdown timer on this page — just a calendar that doesn't care about your feelings.

Questions, Answered Straight

FAQ

"Is this tax advice?"

No — education. It's the analysis and the honest numbers so that when you talk to your own professional (please do), you're buying confirmation instead of a from-scratch discovery bill.

"I don't even have an LLC yet."

Perfect timing. The kit covers the sequence — what to form, when, and which piece actually changes your taxes (spoiler: it's not the LLC itself).

"I'm brand new / barely profitable."

Then the kit will probably tell you to stay simple — and show you the profit level where that flips, so you know your trigger point. Cheapest "not yet" you'll ever buy.

"What if I have a partner?"

Covered — multi-owner rules, plus the two situations where a partnership beats an S corp outright.

"Will this be outdated next year?"

The math engine isn't, and every figure is date-stamped to 2026 sources. Editions update when the IRS publishes new numbers.

"Mac/PC/phone?"

PDF + browser tool + spreadsheet (Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets). Everything works everywhere.

Ten minutes from now, you'll know.

One question, answered with your numbers, for less than lunch. And if the answer is "stay exactly as you are" — that's worth the $7.99 too. Maybe most of all.

Get the Decision Kit — $7.99 →

Instant download · 2026 Edition · yours forever